Royal Ascot Day 1 - Tuesday 17th June
Firstly and very importantly, a MASSIVE THANK YOU for all of the messages and kind comments regarding Sean. I have copied them all into an email and sent them to the family and I know that they have had a very big impact and have been very gratefully received. You can't buy respect, you earn it, and your feedback very much showed the respect Sean had. Things will be VERY numb and strange for a while and whilst a few have you have suggested it would be OK to give this week a swerve, you know what, Sean would have hated that, he would be on the phone saying "the show must go on" and cheering every winner home, well the Irish ones especially. So we'll wipe our eyes, dust ourselves down and despite how we feel, and despite a frankly poor run of form in the past few weeks, we'll aim to find some winners and big priced winners as always, that will be the best memorial for Sean....we do have one of a pair he had highlighted for the week running in the 3.40 race.
Day One at AScot has two LONG DISTANCE handicaps over 2 miles and 4 furlongs and 1 miles and 6 furlongs and we will deal with them first. Then comes the 2 year old Coventry Stakes over 6 furlongs and the all age King Charles 111 Stakes (a non handicap but treated such by some bookies) over 5 furlongs. Those races have fields of 21 and 23 runners respectively and should provide clues to any early Draw bias, although I personally feel that early pace will be a vital requirement and more so the more firm the ground gets later in the week.
We've tips from Carolyn, Racing Journalist (RJ) and The Advisor, nothing from the North today and quite understandably Micheal does not feel able to focus at the moment for understandable reasons. We can't and won't seek to replace Sean for the foreseeable future, that would be totally wrong, so for a short period, and having been personally proofing on the sidelines for a while now, I will return this week with some analysis (using my pseudonym as The Speculator) borne of necessity and hoping for some divine intervention from above. I wasn't too shabby at best and when focussed, and I'm certainly focussed right now to succeed.