Qipco Champions Day 2016, better than Arc?

Team of Racemakers 2016

This year's Champions Day at Ascot was as early as 9 a.m. start in the racecourse for me and other racemakers. Basically, racemakers are the people who helps people to find places in the racecourse, identify possible winner in the paddock, lay bets or just to get racegoers more involved in racing and answer the questions. This job is volunteering role, but it is rewarding when you want to add this on your CV or just for making connections. Trying racemaker’s role for the first time I found it very enjoyable, as I kept myself busy welcoming people coming to the racecourse, having a chat with some foreign people who are visiting Ascot for the first time, but been involved in racing for a few years. Additionally, I never used twitter that much on one day! I hope this will turn out somehow useful.

Mme Corine de Barbe. @Michael R Smithson photo

Raceday started with parade of Corrine de Barbe beloved gelding Cirrus Des Aigles parade with his main jockey on top Cristophe Soumillon. It is amazing how much money this racehorse has made in his racing career (over 6mln pounds), especially knowing what his stallion is used for National Hunt purpose. The more amazing is how much this horse is loved by his trainer Corine, groom and even jockey Cristophe Soumillon as each week one of them is uploading a new video with his horse enjoying his retirement in paddock with other horse or simply riding him out in the seaside. I wish that every racehorse would get as much love as Cirrus is having after doing the job they are created for. After this parade, Olympic and para-Olympic medal winners had their parade in the parade ring. Stobart Jockeys championship winners were not forgotten and Josephine Gordon had her mementoes given in front of the stands as British Champion Apprentice and Jim Crowley was greeted as a Champion jockey. After amazing opening ceremony, weather became much more welcoming with much more sunshine and only very light breeze, horses for the first race been led up in the paddock.  

Qipco British Champions Long Distance Cup (Group 2)

Sheikzayadroad. Foto@Michael R Smithson

David Simcock’s trained 7 years old gelding showed his class here, while 4/6 Fav Order of St George finished just fourth behind the post. This just showed, that only 13 days of rest and travelling back and forth to France was clearly not enough rest to win the 2miles long race on the good ground in Ascot. It is shame that Simple Verse could not prove that she is better than boys and finished only third. In my opinion, jockey was not the best choice here. Andrea Atzeni done a good job on her by winning last year’s St Leger in Doncaster and Fillies Stakes in Ascot and I am surprised why he was not recruited for the job as he was not booked for any other ride in this race.

Qipco British Champions Series Sprint Stakes (Group 1)

The Tin Man 

Tom Queally would not stayed to win all the races with Frankel if he wouldn’t been good enough. Here he showed his class on James Fanshawe trained gelding The Tin Man (odds 13/2). Victory of this 4 year old gelding was very important for Newsells Park stud, as he is out of their stallion Equiano. My nap Signs of Blessing finished only fourth, as he looked very close to the victory if the finish post would have been about 50 yards closer than it was. Shame of John Gosden’s only once beaten colt Shalaa, as he looked magnificent on the day, but probably field this time was too strong for him. Quiet Reflection and Mecca’s Angel did not showed impressive result either, but definitely helped to create the strong field of sprinters. Nevertheless, finish looked impressive!

Qipco British Champion Series Fillies and Mares Stakes (Group 1)

Race over 2000meters been held for 3 year old and older fillies in the thirteen runners field. I was lucky enough to be walking around with Harriet Fuller who is writing for The Sun magazine racing section and we had a great look to horses while standing in the pre-parade ring. I always admired John Gosden as a trainer and always been great believer in horses trained by him. I was very lucky to stand in pre parade ring yesterday, when he walked with owners after saddling a mare and one if the owners just said ‘ I just want her to come back home safe and sound. This all we need today.’ I took this as good omen, but have not lay it as it usually brings bad luck and horses I lay bets on does not win. Well, 4 year old Dubawi daughter Journey, ridden by Frankie Dettori came back home safe and sound, I would say really safe as she finished few lengths in front of other contenders. And yes, crowd loves Frankie Dettori, and they do love his flying dismount more, so most of the people were rushing to the parade ring just so see and how he jumps off the horse!  I was impressed by Journey, but also felt a bit sorry for Dermot Weld trained Zhukova as she looked quite impressive before the start, but only managed to finish 7^th.

Journey and Frankie Dettori

Queen Elizabeth II Stakes (Sponsored by Qipco) (Group 1)

Minding beats Ribchester

Only fourth race brings racing glory to O’Brien and Ryan Moore. 7/4 Favourite Minding brings victory quite easily, when William Buick ridden Ribchester comes second. Godolphin must felt a bit bitter, as win of Ribchester would have been easy victory of Champion owner of the year. Now, it will take a bit of time again to find out who will be Owner of the Year. However, Minding is just completely classy horse which deserved this victory. Finishing third to Almanzor in Irish Champions Stakes a month ago showed how good she is, and winning Queen Elizabeth just brought extra cherry on the cake or in other words her impressive racing career.

Qipco Champion Stakes (British Champions Middle Distance) (Group 1)

What a racecard here. It just looked amazing, and probably more impressive than Arc’s card thirteen days ago. Irish Derby winner Jack Hobbs, who sustained pelvic injury and was not racing for a while, did look impressive on the day. Found, Arc winner and filly who was not afraid to beat Golden Horn last year. And of course, French raider Almanzor, three year old colt out of only 18 progenies given stallion Wootton Bassett. Leaving the fact, that this stallion is not very popular, Almanzor must have looked pretty good in 2014 Arqana Sales as he was bought for 100,000euros. Luckily, he was absolutely worth every penny of it as his racing career is quite impressive and he ends 2016 season by easily beating Found and Jack Hobbs here on Champions Day in Ascot. It was great to see this amazing horse winning the biggest prize of the day under brilliant ride of Cristophe Soumillon. Also, it was great to see his wife taking the kids and taking them to walk back with Almanzor to the winning enclosures.

Balmoral Handicap (Sponsored By Qipco)

This stunning raceday has finished with 12/1 outsider Yuften winning Balmoral handicap under the ride of Andrea Atzeni. Remarkable came second and Firmament was third. Finish was very close and took a lot of shouting from fairly drunk crowd.

Meeting ended with Afterparty inside the main building, with Sara Cox and Sigala appearance. All in all, all the racemakers had a great day and I am sure I will be working as a racemaker again sometime soon!

Point to point racing - the begining of National Hunt racehorse career

It is a time of the year now then point to point horses are coming back into the yards in England and Ireland, or the young stock has been broken in a month ago or so and starts being exercised for the new point to point season which will start in December. By this time jump racing trainers and dealers should have gone to NH stock sales in UK and Ireland and got the exciting strings of horses for the next season. Stallion names as Kayf Tara, Flemensfirth, Milan, King's Theatre, Presenting, Robin Des Champs and Oscar (to name a few) will appear on the cards of stable doors, but horses might be still not named yet. It will be a few Stowaway's, Getaway's and Yeats which are fairly new stallions with exciting prospects.

One of the schooling sessions 

Cottenham, Opening Meeting (Norfolk)

 National Hunt horses are usually broken in then they are 3 years old, giving time for skeleton to grow up, as those type of horses are much bigger than flat racehorses. Some of the NH horses are coming into training from the flat racing yards, but those are usually going straight to hurdling but only few of them can be seen jumping big fences. After being broken in, horses will be trotted up on the hills for about 4-6 weeks or will go straight to trotting and cantering in the yards where interval training is more preffered than conditional. In a meantime, they will be loose schooled to get to know how to jump. After they got fit, jumping under the saddle will be introduced to them and after they got some accuraccy jumping hurdles or fences in a slow pace. To continue their training, work riders will ask more speed between the fences and horses will be nearly ready to race. These maidens will be expected to start running after the New Year, then they will turn 4 years old. Point to point racing nowadays is a very good place for dealers and NH trainers to test the youngstock over smaller fences than they're at under the rules racing. Also, there is plenty of meetings over the country with nice atmosphere, well maintained ground (many courses are doing meetings only few times a year) and all sorts of thoroughbreds. This makes point to point welcoming sport for people who wants to spend their weekend outdoors with a bit of a thrill watching racehorses running 3 miles on the usually wet ground and jumping from 16 to 20 fences. Therefore it is quite challenging for the 4 year old horse, maiden races at the point to point racecourses now are becoming right place for dealers or trainers to rise the price of their horse. Sometimes it does not look fair for people who are in this sport for years, training horses to give some fun for themselves and their owners without having a professional yard and finance to buy expencive and promising bloodstock to get beat by 40,000 pounds costed 3 year old, but this is how business works for dealers. And this is deaers are making big NH trainers life's easier by showing horse potential from his young days in training. Then you come pointing for the first time and do not have a clue why these fit horses are running here for a few hundred quit, thousands are left in question behind the scenes. It is amazing, how horse's price can go up from 40,000 up to 70,000 or 100,000 pounds after one or two wins in the point to point racecourse (especially if it is in Ireland) or it can down from 40,000 or 50,000 to a few thousands if horse needs more time or is actually more or less useless in racing field. 

But not only dealers are buying and selling pointers, some of the point to point trainers are very profesional and do not change amateur license into professional only because of support of their owners. England is country with lots of traditions behind and pointing is one of them. Winter here is not very cold, but quite wet and it is much better to have a reason to go outdoors with a bit of a thrill watching your horse running instead of sitting at home.

Kingston Blount meeting (Buckinghamshire)

Lithuanian horseracing is alive again!

There is one quite small country in the Eastern Europe which has long history. Abandoned by Russians and Germans for several times, luckily it has freedom since 1991. But freedom does not include the luxury or traditions, nor the instructions how to rule the country and succeed. Horseracing is not excluded from this and when some foreign people might have  good laugh what we are doing here, I am really happy in my heart that this is happening at all. Being a lithuanian, I was lucky enought to grew up with the horseracing over here. It was a few racedays a year, few thoroughbreds and some mixed breed races. Everything in fields lined up by lines similar to electric fence. Being 11 years old, I had to ride thoroughbreds and loved it completely. It took us 8 years to get sport going, build a racetrack and invite at least polish people to compete against us. It is a huge achievement what we have dual purpose racetrack in the country with only 3 million people population. It really helps trainers to write up horses in the most suiting ground for them. Also, it is only one racetrack in the Baltic countries. Therefore Poland has three racetracks, all of them has only turf surface. Here, you can run horses on the dirt and see their potential. Meetings are held every three weeks, to keep small number of horses running whole season if possible. Small number of racehorses and lack of yearly traditions brings the one of the biggest problems: jockeys. At the moment, most of the owners are bringing polish jockeys to ride over here. One of them, Dmitryj Petryakov will soon guarantee Jockey of The Year status, as he won 3 races out of 5 rides both days when he was riding here. It is amazing achievement, as this lad always listens to trainers and brings the result even with outsiders. On the other hand, local jockeys are really strugling with weight, and some horses are carrying even more than 3kgs overweight. It is a huge problem in thoroughbred races, but it does not seem to bother our national breed race of Zemaitukai. Most of the winners in this race carried even 15kgs overweight and won! Zemaitukai are connemara's size horses, or even smaller. They have been as a war riding horses, now going racing, show jumping or endurance riding. Moreover, this race and mixed breed horses races shows how unique lithuanian horseracing is. It can not be missed so easy, so if you ever visiting Lithuania on the summer time, please have a look at www.raseiniuhipodromas.lt and you might see the show yourself only for 5 euros!

Trys mėnesiai jaunų top class žirgų, verslininkas bosas ir Hereford kalnai.

Vasara Lietuvoje nebuvo labai džiuginanti. Trys žirgai buvo pilnai paruošti važiuoti į lenktynes ir jas laimėti, pinigai išleisti skrydžiams ir galiausiai paaiškėja, kad lenktynės daromos nesilaikant jokių taisyklių. Gyvenime yra dažnai sakoma, ypač apie žmonių santykius : Nekęsk ne žaidėjo, nekęsk žaidimo (Don't hate the player, hate the game), tačiau aš niekada nežiūrėjau į žirgus kaip į mašinas kurios kala bapkes arba kurios sugriūna ir jas galima tiesiog išmesti. Ir aš myliu lenktynių žaidimą, bet tikrai pradėjau nekęsti tų, kurie net nesistengia jo žaisti pagal taisykles. Ir vėl viskas grįžta pas žirgus, kurie yra nekalti dėl šitų proto užtemimų. Trimetė Gema tikrai labai sustiprėjo ir buvo dirbama su 2008 metų legenda Obietnica gan lygiaverčiai visą vasarą. Spears atiduodavo viską ką galėjo treniruotėse ir tiesiog alpo iš noro parodyti ką ji gali lenktynių takelyje. Deja, gyvenimas ne visuomet leidžia tau pasilikti arba išlaikyti tai, ką sukūrei. Žirgai liko be bėgimų, o aš tikrąja to žodžio prasme praradau viltį ir priėmiau viliojantį pasiūlymą grįžti dirbti į Angliją.
Skrydis su persėdimu ir aš Birmighame. Šiaip ne taip sulaukiu traukinio į Ledbury ir treneris iš stoties mane nuveža tiesiai į kaimą ir apgyvendima pas nerealiai gero charakterio močiutę. Kita diena - Šeštadienis, pradedame dirbti nuo 7nių, penki žirgai prajoti, viskas super greitai ir padaryta jau apie 12:30. Labai ilga pietų pertrauka, iki 4val vakare kai grįžti tik parvesti žirgus iš levadų ir juos pašerti.
labai nedidelė komanda, nerelaus grožio arklidės ir du gallopai, du komplektai kliūčių ir dar visas laukas kliūčių su padangomis balanso treniruotėms. Aikštė tik apjotiems žirgams, aikštė žirgams apjoti (dengtom sienom, bačkos pavidalo) ir kita aikštė laisvam šokdinimui. Visi žirgai jauni, 3-5 metų, todėl jojam ilgom kilpom ir bandom tiesiog juos išlaikyti balanse. Po mėnesio atvažiuoja metinukai, jie apjojami labai greitai, per porą savaičių ir dar po dviejų išvažiuoja pas trenerius pradėti karjerą lygiosiose lenktynėse.
Ši vieta yra labai gera mokykla jauniems NH žirgams. Žinoma, apjojimas kaip ir daugumoje vietų, greitas ir tikslus. Pora dienų dengtoj aikštėj, savaitė įvesti 'stabdžius ir posūkius' 20x60 aikštelėje ir kitą savaitę jau jojam tiesiai į 400metrų smėlio ratą kur prasideda raumenų išbandymas. Risčia, po to seka zovada, kita pusė, vel risčia ir vėl zovada. Kai kurie žirgai to neatlaiko, parėjus namo sutraukia raumenis. Bet tai neveda prie poilsio, kita diena ir jie vėl jojami. Kai pagaliau sulaukiam lietaus, žirgai gali vėl treniruotis į statų medžio drožlėmis išpiltą gallopą. Pokytis iškart veda prie geresnių rezultatų, vis mažiau žirgų sutraukia raumenis. Po kelių savaičių, vakarais pridedam laisvą šokdinimą. Visas penkias dienas žirgai laisvai šokinėja po penkias minutes. Pirmieji kartai tikrai nebūna labai gražūs, bet ir labai gerai parodo kurie žirgai gimė su talentu, o kuriems dar reikės išmokti tai, ko nedavė genai. Po mėnesio ar dviejų, priklausomai, kiek fiziškai stiprūs patapo žirgai, jie yra pradedami šokdinti per hurdle ir easy fix tipo kliūtis. Kai atsiranda technika, pridedamas greitis ir belieka surasti tinkamą bėgimą.
Viskas vyksta neįtikėtinai greitai. Pirmom savaitėm nuo 7ryto iki 1val. suspėjom prajoti po 8 žirgus tuo pačiu juos visus numaudant po jojimo ir paleidžiant į levadas. Visi žirgai jauni ir stiprūs, linksmi, nes jiem suteiktos visos galimybės jaustis itin gerai. Problemos su nugara yra tvarkomos chiropraktikos specialistės, kai kurioms kojų problemoms yra skiriamas gydymas lazeriu, o kai kurios pavargusios nugaros ir sąnariai - hydrokortisono injekcijomis.
Rutina ir darbo krūvis labai skiriasi nuo kitų trenerių, kurie turi tikslą vieną žirgą išlaikyti tose pačiose arklidėse ilgiau nei vienus metus. Čia nėra jokio palauk, nebent savininkai yra pasiruošę laikyti žirgą besivystant jo karjerai. Visi kiti žirgai turi savininką, kuris į sportą žiūri kaip į verslą. Šie brangūs grynakraujai turės padidinti savo paskutinę pirkimo kainą bent 30proc. po savo pirmojo bėgimo, todėl išgauti rezultatą norima gan greitai ir efektyviai. Pirmas žirgo bėgimas turi jį atlydėti į ketvertuką, kad vėliau jis galėtų būti parduotas brangiau ir geriausia, privačiai, tiesiai geriems treneriams. Kaip visada, aukcionai parduoda nemažai kačių maiše... Turėjome vieną žirgą, kuris buvo nupirktas už 38tūkst. eurų kaip trimetis, treneris praleido netgi metus laiko dirbant ir mokant šį žirgą ir galiausiai lenktynių rezultatai visus nuvylė. Po dviejų nesėkmingų startų,jau keturmetis, žirgas buvo parduotas aukcione už 2800svarų. Kai kam tikriausiai pasisekė turėti bent jau saugų žirgą, žinant kiek darbo buvo į jį įdėta.
Dirbit su skirtingais jaunais žirgais yra vienas malonumas, nes kiekviena diena tau duoda kažkokį progresą ir naują išbandymą. Taip pat, tai tik dar vienas įrodymas, kad gerus rezultatus galima pasiekti labai greitai, kai turi atitinkamas priemones.