November 23rd Update
We are looking forward to an exciting and hopefully winning week ahead with two chances to trouble the scorers !
Tomorrow sees Surrey Lord in action at Kempton to hopefully shrug off his 7-pound rise for winning at Ffos Las and to claim back-to-back wins. He steps up in grade to class 4, and lines up in a 2-mile handicap hurdle to be ridden by conditional jockeys only. Ben Macey who is a very good young jockey based at Jonjo O’Neil’s yard takes his first ride in Surrey Racing colours. The ground is on the easy side of good and although Surrey Lord goes on all types, he would be better with a stamina test as he has been one paced in the quicker 2-mile races. Toby will walk the course beforehand to make sure it’s easy enough, if not, he will be rerouted to run in a 2.5-mile contest at Southwell on Tuesday, the 13.50 race, I’m sure to the frustration of the owners making their way to Kempton!
On Thursday Sea Presenting returns to action after being off the racecourse for 280 days, as she will (hopefully) be declared to run at Lingfield in the 1.50 race, a mares only maiden hurdle over 2.5 miles. She’s been a bit slow to come to hand after her enforced break and is probably entitled to need this run to get back to fitness, but looking at the other entries in the race, she will be one of the favourites to break their maiden tag. She’s certainly a much stronger looking mare and benefitted from a few months off to grow both physically and mentally. Hopefully, she’ll put in a good performance as we have many owners looking forward to a day at the races at one of our local tracks.
Surrey Quest has been on medication to fight his ulcers, it’s hard to know whether the ulcers have been performance inhibiting but we may find out soon as he could return to racing early December with hurdle races earmarked at Chepstow and Sandown on Saturday 6th.
Of the flat horses, no real new news. Surrey Etoile and Surrey Moon are remaining in training throughout the winter and will make their debuts on all-weather as soon as they are ready which could be as early as January. We are debating a German Derby entry for Surrey King as despite his stall’s fiasco on his first day at school, he remains full of potential. Entries close next week so we’ll discuss with the Hughie and the owners by the end of the week. Surrey Bolt, who amazingly still has two shares available in him, (at least we know that well bred horses only appeal to small number of owners!) is being broken in at the Clovers and doing everything that’s being asked of him in this very early stage of his development. When Steve is back on his feet, we will arrange a trip to Newmarket to see both horses there.
Good luck to the owners this week – a real good chance to add to this year’s winning tally!
Possible races and events.
November
Monday 24th Surrey Lord – Kempton – 15.40
Tuesday 25th Surrey Lord – Southwell – 13.50
Thursday 27th – Sea Presenting - Lingfield - 1.50
December
Saturday 6th - Surrey Quest – Chepstow, Sandown
Monday 29th - Surrey Quest - Newbury.