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Captain's Blog - 2nd March 2012

News broke yesterday afternoon about a schooling accident that Kauto Star suffered late last week. Apparently it was a heavy fall and he is struggling to recover from it. The fact that he is still stiff and a little sore has prompted the Nicholls team to go public and the horse is described as 50/50 to make the Cheltenham Gold Cup. There will be some who will argue that we should have been told earlier that Kauto had suffered a fall and that to tell us a week after the incident is just not good enough. This is nonsense, all we need to know is that Kauto is stiff and sore still after the incident, to report the incident itself to us when it happened would be to tell us nothing useful, what punters are interested in are the consequences of a schooling fall, not the fall itself. After all, horses fall schooling all the time and suffer minor bumps in the road as far as their training regimes are concerned every day and if trainers were forced to report every incident that occurred in their yards we would be swamped with paperwork and information that is misleading. It would have done no harm to have told us he had fallen last week, but that information itself is useless without us knowing what the consequences are and those consequences often only come to light a few days after the incident. All this means he has been pushed out to 4/1 and the drift may continue. Even if he recovers and runs at Cheltenham his confidence may be affected and that is something nobody can measure.

My new work regime involves a five mile bike ride before making use of public transport. Last night just as I got home I suffered a catastrophic breakdown, well I got a puncture and the last part of my trip involved pushing the bike home. Thus this morning with another day ahead of me working for I am battling against time to get the bike fixed and make it to the Studio for all the action from Newbury. Of course I could use other methods of transport but using the bike prevents this tight scotsman having to pay for parking at the railway station. Ii am pretty confident all will be well as there is abike shop in my town and the guy who works there is usually fairly helpful. I will be knocking on the door at 9.00am and then with a bit of luck will be back on the road.

The results at Meydan were quite simply unfathomable. All I will take out of the day is the brilliant ride from SDS to win the Zabeel Mile. He made every yard of the running on Do it All for Godolphin to win this Group 2 at 33/1. It was a brilliant ride from the front and in quick time SDS has justified the faith that Godolphin have invested in him by making him number 2 to Frankie. There will be many more days in the sun for SDS in those famous blue colours.

Right I am off to the bike shop before pedaling my way throught he fog to work.

All the best.

Today's Selection

4.15 Doncaster – Aegean Destiny