The string walking back down Warren Hill
A cold start to the week but it stayed dry. The horses continue to remain in good order and we had a new arrival yesterday as Mutamayel headed over from Dubai. He is a two year old son of Mawatheeq who was second in the Champion Stakes for Marcus Tregoning and I trained his dam Musharakaat. His half-sister Alqubbah is also at La Grange and she won a Yarmouth maiden last season and looks a nice prospect for this year.
We only had the one runner on Saturday as the ground was too testing for Amazing Red at Doncaster. Makman ran very well to be third in the novice stakes at Kempton and he will have learnt a lot from the experience. I liked his professional attitude in the preliminaries and he showed plenty of promise in the race itself. He travelled well and having been slightly green he saw his race out well and was staying on nicely at the end. We have one runner today in the 4:50pm at Lingfield. Timia was disappointing last time so we gave her a break and have freshened her up, I hope she can run well.
It was great to see some good turf action at Doncaster on Saturday and it is not long now until the Craven meeting here at Newmarket. Belardo looks like he will be having a say at the highest level this year and The Last Lion looks like another very smart Mark Johnston two year old. The Lincoln was exciting and having travelled well Secret Brief finally got the better of the argument with the brave Bravo Zolo.
The cricket ended with great disappointment as England let what looked like a winning position slip when Carlos Braithwaite hit Ben Stokes for four consecutive sixes in the final over. Stokes has had a good World Cup with the ball and it was a great shame that he could not deliver when it really mattered. England have done a lot better than most people expected.