THE 2012/2013 season finished last Saturday and the new one promptly started 24 hours later!
After a difficult winter with many race meetings being abandoned due to waterlogging and those that were on only able to produce very soft going, it was a real struggle as most of ours prefer better ground.
However, we ended the 2012/2013 season on a good total of 30 winners and owners' prize-money of well over £200,000 and statistically in the top 35 trainers in the country on prize-money.
If the trainers' table was calculated on winners instead we would have finished 23rd and with more than 500 trainers in the country, we are very proud of what our relatively small team achieved.
We had many highlights over the season and certainly any winner is always celebrated to the full here, as often the smaller races are even more competitive and harder to win.
Champion Court gave us a thrill in the King George Chase when he was in front turning for home and for a split second the others looked beaten.
He eventually finished a creditable fourth and although disappointing a little at the Festival, it was such a thrill to get him back to win at Cheltenham last month.
Now he's out on his holidays and I hope to aim him straight for the Paddy Power Gold Cup at Cheltenham in November.
Seymour Eric has been an absolute star for the yard. He joined us in the autumn and hadn't managed to win a race – but that was soon to change.
By the end of the season he'd won five of his six starts for us including going into the history books as the last-ever winner at Hereford Racecourse when it closed its doors in December.
His final win at Ayr a couple of weeks ago was probably the most exciting as the ground had dried up and he had to do all the donkey work out in front.
He'll be such an exciting chaser for this new season.
I could go on and on and probably make a good case for all of our winners.
An exciting but unofficial winner was at Cheltenham in October when our pest controller and regular work rider Mark Caswell won the charity race on Sky Calling cosily, cheekily pipping Paul Nicholls' wife Georgie just before the line!
Mark had put so much hard work into raising money for Cancer Research, a charity very close to his and our hearts, and into getting fit and for him to win was the icing on the cake.
Any Currency became our first-ever runner in the Grand National and gave us all a massive buzz in completing safely, albeit last of the finishers. He'll hopefully improve on that back there next year.
Stable jockey Ian Popham provided us with plenty of highs but also another massive low.
He returned from injury in the perfect way in July when his comeback ride Sky Calling won for him and in the process became our 100th winner.
However, he'd only been back a couple of months when he was riding Oyster Hill for me at Plumpton. While having his girth checked at the start the horse panicked and reared over, landing on Ian and breaking his pelvis again.
It was devastating for all of us and especially Ian who had worked tirelessly to get back to full fitness after breaking it the season before.
Fortunately the breaks weren't as bad this time and, although he still missed three months, he came back fitter and more positive than ever and again rode a winner for me, Johnny Og this time, on his first day back.
Earlier this week Ian rode his 75th winner which means that he is no longer entitled to claim a weight allowance in his races and is a fully-fledged professional jockey. He is riding out of his skin and fits in so well with the team – we are lucky to have him on board.
He is supported by our new conditional jockey Ollie Garner.
Ollie also fits in very well, rides well and works hard so he will get plenty of chances this season.
I'm hoping to get one more run into some of the horses that have been in over the winter before they got out to grass.
We will then have a team of about 12 horses in training to run over the summer months.
It is always a relief to have a few winners over the summer months but it is getting more and more competitive so we'll have to try even harder this time, I'm sure.
All in all it was a fantastic season.
I'm lucky enough to have very supportive owners behind me, a great team working hard at home and my family being understanding of the long hours involved.
I've promised that I will manage to join them on a week's holiday over the summer too.
It's something I'm not great at doing as there is always so much to do here.
However, I know I'll make sure my wife Belinda brings the laptop so we can still do a little bit of work if we need to while we are away!
↧
Stable Talk with Gloucestershire racehorse trainer Martin Keighley
↧