Thursday 18 August 2011

York races was really good yesterday - We had been invited by a company called Fine software solutions, whose parent company are called Fine Organics , the MD'S own a couple of racehorses and bought an Elite Heart monitor from us a little while ago - they are now in the process of developing some software so that the data collected from the heart monitor can be used and interpreted, which then allows the owner of the horse to log on to the trainers web-site and find out exactly what their horse has done and what level of fitness the horse is up to - They gave a presentation and it was very impressive - there were some top owners there (including Graham Wylie) who were really interested. The boss of Polar heart rate monitors was also there and he was a little annoyed that they had decided to use our heart monitor rather than theirs as they are a massive company and are the leading manufacturers of heart monitors in the world - he was a nice chap though and agreed that our system (having the sensors in the girth) was a much simpler system than theirs. We had lunch and I sat next to Graham Wylie who started Sage, and has recently been in the press as his main trainer Howard Johnson had just been banned for running a horse that had been de-nerved. All very controversial and obviously Graham had no idea what was going on. Even though he is horribly rich he is a very nice person and not in the least bit arrogant - he has twin 17 month old daughters, one of which has to go in for another heart operation in October and we spoke how no money in the world can buy health and what a leveller her illness has been for him. We can only hope and pray that the operation is successful.
Everyone was so friendly, the MD's wife, Juliet, had put a £2 bet on the place pot and there was great excitement when all six of her horses came in and she won over £900!! We left at around 7 o'clock and then went on to Sue and Stuarts who used to be Belgian Blue breeders and lived in Anglesey but have since moved to a lovely house just outside York. We had a super evening with them and it was great to catch up with all the news, although I was shocked to hear of a couple of deaths within the BB society that I had no idea about - one girl (Rebecca Seales) who was only in her early thirties and Margaret Ashton, who was one of the founder breeders of blues. Very sad, and I felt dreadful as I really should have been at Margaret's funeral, as in the early days when I was chairman of the society and before when we were starting up our herd of blues we spent a lot of time with her and her husband Tom.
After a delicious breakfast, prepared by Stuart, we drove home and back to work. It was pouring with rain, which is just what we need to get the grass to grow. It has been very dry again lately.