7th April Update
The Flat season was truly back with a bang after this weekend’s action! ‘Old timer’ Frankie Dettori rode 6 winners in a row at Santa Anita last night, two champions of HK won the big races at Sha Tin today, Lucky Sweynesse and Beauty Joy have amassed £10m in prize money between them! The action continued this afternoon with high quality Group Racing in Dublin and Paris on very heavy ground.
We are competing in only our 3rd race of the year tomorrow with Surrey Force set to go in the 2.30 at Lingfield, a class 5 novice race over 1 mile with Danny Muscutt on board. We have yet to trouble the scorers in 2024 and we don’t feel tomorrow is going to be any different as it’s very much another educational run for Force over a shorter distance than optimal, on a tight track that probably won’t suit, with a draw in the car park! He will receive a handicap mark though (released Tuesday 16th) and from then we can plan longer races on the turf and pick up some wins through the spring and summer. It will be great to catch up with 10 of the syndicate owners at Lingfield tomorrow, despite the above, it’s still nice to go racing.
It’s not just about flat racing though as Surrey Quest had two entries made this week, one into the Scottish Grand National at Ayr on April 20th and then the week later in the BET365 (the old Whitbread) Gold Cup at Sandown. The priority is the race in Scotland with the Sandown race as the back up plan although Kitty’s Light managed to win both last year so who knows! There have been 71 entries to Ayr and 80 to Sandown, the majority split between the trainers chasing the UK title, Dan Skelton and Paul Nicholls, plus a multitude of entries from Willy Mullins (also chasing the UK title) and the rest of the Irish trainers. A vast number of horses are dual entered (50 of the 71 at Ayr) and many are also engaged at Aintree this week. Weights are published Wednesday so that will give us more of an idea of our chances of getting in either race but we are fairly confident that we will be racing. The current going at Ayr is Heavy (soft in places) with showers all week. Hopefully it dries out a bit as Quest would prefer ground on the softer side of good.
Before that we will possibly have a runner on the 15th. Surrey Noir has been pleasing Charlie with his work at home, especially on the softer turf gallops and as such Charlie feels he will be a much better horse with those racing conditions and a move back to 6 furlongs. Unfortunately there aren’t too many options with a class 4 0-85 handicap at Windsor next Monday afternoon as the only viable race which is a step up in class for Noir. There will probably be a lot of entries (midday Tuesday) so we are hoping the race divides and we get a break to take our chances.
We paid Hughie a visit this week and it was good to see all three horses looking in great shape. Surrey Fire is just walking but looks fantastic. He’ll have a scan around the 22nd April and hopefully he’ll get the go ahead to resume training. That would be the best case scenario and even then he won’t be racing until at least June. Surrey Belle is looking good, she’s put her winter weight loss back on and training well. We should see her on the track in the first or second week of May. Surrey Charm is the most forward of the 3 and is working well with Belle. We feel Charm can step up in distance this season and the two best options this month are Catterick (over 1m 4f) on the 24th and Windsor (over 1m 3f) on the 29th but there are also plenty of other races that will suit so it’s not quite set in stone yet.
Surrey Shadow worked a good gallop on the flat at Newmarket yesterday and his fitness is improving every week and he’s very much on target for a debut in 2 weeks time. Surrey Lord returns to Toby this week so we’ll get an update on him and a plan of action for next weekend. Surrey Fortune continues to enjoy the spring weather in Cornwall. while Surrey Mist has one more week walking the streets of Norfolk.
Good luck to Surrey Force tomorrow, we’ll see some of the horse owners at Lingfield.
Possible races and events
April
Monday 8th – Surrey Force – Lingfield 2.30 pm
Monday 15th – Surrey Noir - Windsor
Wednesday 17th - Surrey Shadow Beverley
Craven Breeze Up Sale
Thursday 18th – Kevin’s Open Morning 10.30-12.00
Saturday 20th – Surrey Quest – Ayr - Scottish Grand National
Tuesday 23rd - Surrey Shadow – Yarmouth
Wednesday 24th - Surrey Charm - Catterick
Wednesday 24th - Goffs Breeze Up Sale
Saturday 27th – Surrey Quest – Sandown – BET365 Gold Cup
Monday 29th – Surrey Charm - Windsor
May
Thursday 2nd – Guineas Breeze Up Sale
Thursday 9-11th – Arqana Breeze Up Sale
Tuesday 21st – Surrey Racing Golf Day – Silvermere Golf Club