I have recently joined my Club’s racing society, and with it comes a helpful app called The Racing Manager. This pings every time one of our five or six horses farts, has breakfast, goes for a run, winks at the auctioneer, or there is any other news that might conceivably be connected to it, or its trainer’s wellbeing. My phone has not stopped pinging now for days. Thus, I can tell you that George Baker is alive and well, although the storm on Thursday frightened his dogs; that he was watching Australian racing but that Candida had gone to Epsom… you get the drift. My old nanny always used to say a happy trainer means a happy horse as she returned from Evening stables.
I am considering applying the same communication technology to The Club’s Automobile Society, which has a limited membership resulting from the gruelling nature of the Society’s competitive activities. Fortunately, we are spared the Beijing Hill Climb, which, once again, the Society’s Patron has insisted is run on the opening day of Cheltenham. These old Hong Kong Taipans can be quite intransigent, but the fact that the Beijing Hill Climb is older than Cheltenham is a strong card for him to play.
Something of a spat has broken out amongst a trio of leading owners, with one grabbing headlines on Tuesday for declaring he was moving his string to France and Ireland, where the Elysian fields are dripping with prizemoney, and they still serve Foie Gras and Barsac Jelly in the Members. Then today, two more owners said
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