Bumping along

This time ten years ago I was working for the monthly racing magazine Pacemaker and loving every minute of it until Haymarket decided to sell it to Dunwoody Sports Marketing and we all lost our jobs. In a way I’m working for Pacemaker again now as the title was later bought and amalgamated with Thoroughbred Owner & Breeder but at the time I was pretty devastated to be made redundant from the job that had provided me with the best three years of my life. While there, my colleagues Julian Muscat, John Boyce and Jeremy Early did everything they could to turn me into a Flat racing fan from a dyed-in-the-wool National Hunt girl, and in a way they succeeded. They taught me to love the Flat and sparked what I know will be a lifelong fascination for pedigrees, but they never quite beat the jumping out of me. Now I’m a proper switch-hitter and am happy all year long, whether at Cheltenham or Newmarket, Fakenham or Wolverhampton.

A personal favourite: the lovely Authorized at Dalham Hall

Fortunately, only a few weeks after Pacemaker’s Haymarket demise in early 2003, I was offered the job of deputy editor and racing editor at Horse & Hound, where I had previously spent many happy years. I was back there for most of that year before the chance came out of the blue to leave London and head to Newmarket to work for Darley. I loved London and still miss it, but the opportunity to work in close proximity to some really nice stallions at Dalham Hall Stud was just too good to turn down and I packed my bags and headed for HQ, not really knowing anyone there.

Of course it now feels like home and I’ve been fortunate through the last ten years to meet and make friends with some outstanding people. Some of them are still here and some, like Camilla, Jamie, Lorna, Harry, Lisa-Jane, Francis, Alix, Dean, Fabricio, Kevin, Katrina and Jeannie, have moved on, but thankfully the world of racing is such a small one that I know I’ll bump into them all somewhere along the road.

I’ve been thinking about that year of change quite a lot this past week. On Tuesday, Darley held a media morning to parade their new stallions Sepoy, Helmet and Casamento. It was a great fun morning with plenty of old friends from my days working there and of course friends and colleagues from the press room. Dalham Hall Stud has changed massively since I first started there when we were all based in the old stud office. I don’t think I’ve ever really lost the excitement I used to feel on driving up Duchess Drive and into the stud when I first worked there. It’s a beautiful farm (or amalgam of four or five farms now), well-kept, of course, and home to so many really lovely horses.

Old friends: Halling and Ken Crozier at Dalham Hall Stud

The faces at the stallion yard have changed a bit in the last ten years. Machiavellian, Polish Precedent and Singspiel have all passed away and are buried nearby in the stallion graveyard, where Dubai Millennium and Reference Point also rest. Halling, Mark Of Esteem and Fantastic Light (the last two named are both now retired and are in luxury pensioners' accommodation with Lammtarra) are probably the only stallions remaining at Dalham from my day, and they have been joined by some pretty exciting names in recent years, including Dubawi, Exceed And Excel and New Approach. The head stallion man Ken Crozier hasn’t changed and it was great to see him watching his boys with pride, as always.

After such an enjoyable morning earlier in the week, it was scarcely believable to hear on Sunday morning that Mick Buckley, who worked for Darley at Kildangan Stud in Ireland for more than 12 years, had died at the age of 45. I know how much Mick was loved and admired by his colleagues. He was very knowledgeable and passionate about the bloodstock industry and a great help to those he worked alongside. His passing at such a young age is very sad news indeed.

The day after my Darley visit, I went on a road trip down to Letcombe Bassett, just outside Wantage, to visit the yard of Mark and Sara Bradstock. It’s always nice to visit a stable with plenty of dogs roaming around and the Bradstock pack, which included a husky with one blue eye and one brown eye and the very noisy Titch (whose party trick was standing on the table and licking my face throughout the interview), made plenty of attempts to get in on the photographs.

A Bradstock hound gatecrashes the photo shoot

The reason for my visit goes back to Horse & Hound, the racing editor of which, Catherine Austen, is still kind enough to commission me for features. This one, for their breeding issue in a few weeks’ time, focuses on the broodmare Plaid Maid, who died four years ago but left behind a terrific legacy in the form of Hennessy winner Carruthers and his very exciting younger brother Coneygree. In fact, there are four of her children at Old Manor Stables – a five-year-old mare named Maid Of Oaksey and the four-year-old full-brother to Carruthers nicknamed Rasher are also in residence. You can read their story in H&H in the coming weeks. Writing it gave me an enormous amount of pleasure, not least because Lord Oaksey, the breeder of all these lovely horses who sadly died last September, is one of my racing heroes.

In his days as John Lawrence, Lord Oaksey was the H&H racing correspondent, writing under the pen name of Audax. He recounted in self-deprecating fashion in his excellent book Mince Pie for Starters that one of his friends said – in jest, I hope – that his autobiography should be called Bumping and Boring, in memory of his riding and writing. He was of course neither a bumper nor a bore. His feats in the saddle are well documented and I don’t believe there’s a racing writer alive today who could hold a candle to him.

Oscar Bernadotte: the next Carruthers? Maybe not

On the subject of a proper bumper (and bore), however, my progress back in the saddle has been a bit stop-start but I did haul myself out this morning amid the snowflakes and dear old Panto was a saint. Those who know me well know how my confidence hangs by a thread these days but I count myself truly lucky to have the old chap back in action and looking after me. Later in the morning, Panto's next-door neighbour and my own 'Carruthers', Oscar Bernadotte, took a spin up the Al Bahathri and is progressing slowly and steadily towards his own bumper debut. My natural pessimism keeps my feet on the ground about him but hearing tales of what the tiny Plaid Maid and her offspring went on to achieve can't help but fire up a little wishful thinking. Here's hopin'.