Reality Striking?

Finished work for now until the time difference makes people come alive in England again, so I thought I'd check on the Japanese club horse reports. Well, that didn't take long, for there was nothing new on the Shadai/Sunday front, and although there are only nine Carrot horses left to watch, seven of them are stuck at Northern Farm!

Out of interest, I thought I'd look at how the new crop of NAR nags were selling. None of the four have reached a 'nearly sold' status, which clicks in after two-thirds of the shares have been claimed. This is probably easy to explain, for of last year's lot, only one has raced - once, and that was three months ago, when it duly broke a bone! Of the crop before that, Shine Tiara has already been retired in disgrace, Million Ways should be retired, Chocolat Sucre is fragile and hardly has ran as a result, Trovao did well until it too broke down, and Nine Half (the only one of the five 2013 NAR horses I didn't take a stake in, and the cheapest of the bunch as it happens) has provided a fair bit of sport but seems to have gone off the boil of late.

Significantly, there were six NAR runners offered by Carrot Club in the 2012 crop - now it is down to four, and they are obviously slow to sell. I would say, and this applies to all the clubs out here, that this is not a lack of enthusiasm (NAR followers are a passionate bunch) but a lack of trust in the items being sold at the prices asked - trust that can only be built up when shareholders see their horses running with a bit of effort (even running would be a damned good start in most cases!) and sugar-coated excuses to cover incompetence are thrown to the side in favour of honest reports, stating what has gone wrong and why when a failure occurs...

PS. As well as Larressingle's attempt at survival, we should have some Aussie racing next weekend, with All Rosie hoping for back-to-back wins at Ewan - he's entered for both Friday and Saturday (assuming he comes out of the first race OK), so you never know. All quiet in England while the shuffling goes on in preparation for another season (Sayesse will probably run next week, though), which means Ireland should be kicking off, although I'm not sure what to think regarding that campaign to be perfectly honest. Perhaps when this big project I'm on is finished, I can clear my head and give it all some serious thought.