A frustrating day today in that we were rather excited about taking Jake to Chaddersley Corbett for his second run of the season when Ben phoned to say that he didn't want to run him. Ben was in the yard yesterday getting the horse ready and seemed to be really looking forward to racing him but in the meantime he had been 'taking advise' and decided 'not to risk it'.
It has been very wet so you could understand the decision if he had a young horse or one that didn't like the soft, but Jake is made to go on soft ground because he hits the ground so hard, he also isn't the fastest horse in the world but has heaps of strength and stamina and jumps like a stag. There is 'no risk' on the soft because they go so much slower, the 'risks' become greater as the ground gets better and the horses go faster. I suppose the most disappointing aspect from our point of view was that he sought 'advice' from people who neither knew his horse or anything about the course and made his decision without any discussion what so ever with us. Obviously our opinion counts for nothing. Jake is such a lovely horse and we would just be delighted to see him do well - it gets increasingly difficult to keep a horse at his peak, he's not getting any fitter at home now and needs to be out there racing otherwise he will go 'over the top'.
We decided to go racing anyway and there were a good number of runners. The ground was as expected soft but good safe racing ground. Very frustrating. On that note I am going to bed....