Where's My Beer?

While War Chronicle has returned to Miho TC to resume a JRA career after an NAR excursion (God help the poor thing!), Magic Key teamed up with Takayuki Yano in the opener at Funabashi, and came second in her debut run. Fine. But I feel robbed to be perfectly honest. The horse in front was obviously tiring, needing a whip off the last corner, yet Magic Key was being held up by the jockey and then starting to fly on its own as soon as it saw the straight. Oddly, though, there was no whip used and we lost by a length. If this was a normal race and, more importantly, I felt everyone had done their best (the start also raised question marks), I'd shrug it off, but these debut races are the only chance to win a bit of money unless you can fast-track to the top like Trovao did. Given the high cost of Shadai and Sunday horses (especially this one!) and running costs that allow you to break even on a good month, this was really annoying, especially when we should have won as far as I'm concerned.

Other big, and much better news - we will have six horses with Mick Channon for a little while, as Blacklister is still at West Ilsley, while a replacement for him has already arrived! The second horse for Lord Ilsley Racing (run by Mick Jr) has also arrived, so it's getting busy in the south of England, and we can look forward to a fun-filled 2016 UK flat season. We'll do the profiles in a bit, as soon as they get named, so watch this space!

Meanwhile, Infinity Love has passed her gate test in Japan, and Tenshinramman and Rush Attack run here on the 12th, with Larressingle also out on the 13th in JRA action. Oddly, I look forward to retiring JRA horses more than seeing the results, as they really that disappointing as a rule, as potential is rarely exploited. Anyway, in the week, Blacklister has another go at Kempton Park in England, and Phosphorus might well be coming back in the last week of December - something else to look forward to, and hopefully it will renew my faith in NAR, which was very badly dented for the first time today, even though my patience had already been tested by Beat The Boarder for months...