August 17th Update

Best wishes to any younger family member who received A level grades this past week and is looking forward to their next life journey, and good luck to those anticipating GCSE grades on Thursday.  

The good weather continues and at this rate we won’t see our NH horses running until Christmas! They are however all well, and we are looking forward to catching up with a few of the owners at Toby’s open day early in September. We will also organise a morning on the gallops early October to see all three and hear Toby’s thoughts for the season ahead. Sea Presenting is enjoying her summer, we do have a syndicate owner with a change of priorities and wishes to sell their 2.5% share in Sea Presenting, the cost £2100 and then the monthly fee is £100. Please note that there are no badges with a 2.5% share. Please get in touch if you are interested. Surrey Lord and Surrey Quest continue to build up their fitness.  

Of the flat horses, Surrey Fire will possibly be entered for Goodwood next Sunday for a Selling Race, over 11 furlongs with the race scheduled for 16.45. We will talk to Hughie to see whether it’s worth taking a chance that the rain will come by the end of the week especially as there aren’t any suitable selling races after that. There was a race for Surrey Shadow at Goodwood on the same day, but he probably won’t be entered as it would need a lot of rain to counteract the undulating track. It does appear that rain is due at the end of the month so Tom may wait for a turf run in early September with potential races at Salisbury (4th) and Haydock (6th).  

Surrey Etoile and Surrey King continue to build up their work towards a potential October debut.

We are also making plans for racehorse owners visits to Hughie’s and Tom’s yards in the coming weeks although as we always say, all the trainers are very welcoming and so if you wish to visit then just let us know and we can arrange that.   

Fortunes can change so quickly for young sires. Many serve big books full of black-type performers in their debut season but are reduced to covering a handful of chancier mares four years later when their first runners haven’t lived up to expectations. But a select few do it the other way round: start off by receiving smaller numbers of mares and then shine so brightly with the fewer early racecourse representatives that resulted from those matings that they cause a run on their services.  Surrey Moon’s sire Study of Man is a good example of the latter. His first crop, which comprises 55 named foals who are now four-year-olds, includes four Group winners, three Listed scorers, three black-type performers and 17 other winners. His second generation, containing 61 named foals now aged three, includes Listed winners Almeric and Suite Francaise, Group 3 third Alla Stella and Listed runner-up Revoir, as well as 17 other winners. Alla Stella is interesting, as she is a half-sister to Surrey Moon’s Dam, Alla Luna, both sharing their dam, Alla Speranza, herself a Group 3 winner.  

Study Of Man could be excused for not yet having achieved much with his third crop of two-year-olds, 46 of whom have been named (including Surrey Moon) as his runners are progressive and generally stay well. Overall, he boasts an outstanding 8.49 per cent strike-rate of black-type winners to runners. For comparison, among the other leading lights of the 2020 intake of sires in Europe, Too Darn Hot is poised on 7.46 per cent, Blue Point comes in at 5.94 per cent and Calyx manages 4.26 per cent, all very good numbers. However, Study Of Man’s true merit, as a consistent source of top-class talent, is best illustrated by Kalpana, Juddmonte’s homebred Group 1-winning filly who is warming up nicely for the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. With the success the stud fee has doubled to £25k and he is recorded by Weatherbys as having covered a full book of 140 blue-chip mares at Lanwades Stud this season, when he was one of the most in-demand stallions around, those foals to be sold next year as yearlings, however, with a smaller crop of yearlings for sale this year, there’s going to be a lot of money changing hands at the forthcoming sales. We may possibly have got very lucky with Surrey Moon, time will tell.    

It was great to see 15 managers in the Surrey Racing Fantasy Football League, representing docile fan bases such as Millwall, Leeds, Chelsea and West Ham, don’t worry, we won’t put them in a room together. Aston Villa, Crystal Palace, Wimbledon, Barnsley, Arsenal, Manchester City. Newcastle and the mighty Alloa Athletic are all represented!   

Have a great week ahead and good luck to the Surrey Fire connections if he has an entry and if the weather breaks next Sunday.

Possible races and events.                        

August
Sunday 24th – Surrey Fire - Goodwood
September
Thursday 4th – Surrey Shadow – Salisbury
Friday 5th – Toby Lawes Open Day 12.30
Saturday 6th – Surrey Shadow - Haydock
October
Friday 24th – Surrey King - Newbury