Well it certainly wasn't the lovely days racing we were hoping for...…  We had a tragedy with the loss of Pasta our lovely homebred mare. Would you believe it happened in the paddock?! She didn't even get on the track, which was just as well as it happened.
She was parading around the paddock looking fabulous. She won best turned out and got a lot of admiring comments. The jockeys got on and just as they were about to go down the chute onto the track the horse in front of Pasta started to kick out - Pasta stopped dead and Scott took his feet out of the irons to relax her. Suddenly she reared up and crashed over backwards - Thankfully Scott was able to jump clear but you could tell that she was dead as soon as she hit the ground. Originally we thought she had broken her neck on impact with the ground but a post-mortem since has shown that she suffered a stroke (a massive bleed) which is why she reared up. She has never reared up in her life before so I knew there was something very strange happening. She must have had a weakness which we were totally unaware of. Very sad but thank goodness it was very quick and she didn't suffer and it happened in the paddock and not on the track during the race where she could have caused injuries to others. She was one of the most genuine horses you could ever come across. I looked forward to my daily rides on her as she was so forward and would go anywhere without question. She didn't have a bad bone in her body....She may not have made the best racehorse, we were yet to find out but I had already earmarked her as my fun horse for the future. Rest in peace my lovely mare. You will always be remembered.

RIP Pasta (Babbiloora)

The rest of the day was only marginally better although both novice jockeys Lucy and Ben did really well and stayed on board. Jess hated the watered ground but ran very well considering and was in the lead most of the way before pulling up two from home. We had tried Craig in blinkers which gave Ben a great spin but as he ran very keen to begin with he ran out of puff at the end and pulled up just before Lucy. As the commentator said he lived up to his name and did 'Too much too soon' !

Scott and Cloud got on really well and they were flying and she was jumping like a bunny. Unfortunately she was a bit too brave four fences from home when still hard on the bridle, she stood off but just clipped the top of the fence and did a complete cartwheel. She was absolutely fine and thank goodness so was Scott, so things could have been so much worse.

I was too upset to sleep so spent the night looking at the very restless Tik on camera -  She was so overdue that I was convinced we were going to lose the foal (and probably her, with the way our luck was going) but at 4am she decided to push properly and although the foal was quite difficult to get out it was alive and she absolutely loves him, a lovely colt foal by Norse Dancer

 

Velvet Steel with her colt foal

4 hours old - Just the tonic we needed.