Cowboys!

After another month of no income from the Shadai and Sunday horses (actually, that's not strictly true, as a few pennies came in this time - around half a percent of the monthly outlay), a crap return from Pop Label, and yet another injury for Phosphorus (can any of the cowboys out here actually keep a horse going for more than a week without injuring it?), we need a damned good result from Kealoha. It is due to run with Honda-kun at Funabashi on Friday, with Magic Key due out the following week at Kawasaki as it happens. Despite the fact that we need winners to recoup a tiny bit of pride, not to mention a bit of cash, I don't think we'll be treated to anything spectacular, so I shall watch both races at home, making sure that things that are close to hand are too heavy to throw at the TV screen.

Belle Plage and War Chronicle are due to go to their racing stables soon, which is about bloody time, after months and months of kicking their hooves back and sipping on pina coladas. While Rush Attack may never see a racetrack again at this rate (and Lotus Blossom may never see one at all, for empty promises are all we've got to show other than a possible late-October or early-November career start date, which will doubtless be shifted further and further back if past experience with this horse is anything to go by), Chocolate Sucre has made it back to Funabashi, and Trovao is getting closer to Tokyo again. To be honest, though, there is little excitement in my office, for what little spark of enthusiasm there was has been dowsed by the news of Phosphorus being out of action again at a time when it should have been returning to the track, and you can bet Chocolat Sucre and Trovao, as well as the JRA horses, are still a long way from race-ready to rub salt into the wound. Thanks to a niggling problem, Vertice is still no closer to starting its career either, with the end of October being cited as a test date - a month beyond the original plan, and I wouldn't mind betting it drifts still further by the time October comes around.

You sometimes wonder if all these injuries are created on purpose, just to take the piss, for surely no professional outfit can keep clocking up maladies at the rate the people out here do? You buy NAR horses because they're supposed to run more often, and therefore provide more sport for your money. Ha - what a joke that assumption has turned out to be! When it comes right down to it, I'd have more trust in the care and skill administered by the likes of Delboy and Rodders than I have in the cowboys that look after racehorses in Japan, especially those camped at Northern Farm. Or maybe it's the breeding, with bloodlines creating nags that are simply too fragile? Either way, I'll be glad to be out of it ASAP - the new catalogues went in the paper recycling box, the invite to the club party was torn up, and I don't even bother looking at club magazines or going to the tracks nowadays. What's the point when you know you'll be told your horse is injured, or performs like a geriatric donkey with asthma when it finally does make a rare appearance in a race? It's simply wasting yet more money and setting myself up for yet more disappointment, which is something I just don't need - indeed, the only race I've seen any kind of real effort in for months on end out here was the third place of Larressingle the other day (far better than the two second places beforehand). This nightmare, brought about by a combination of the greed and incompetence of those who control Japanese racing from all angles, cannot end soon enough for me...