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Photos From The Day

Video of the Race

A long distance day out for many of the ownership group but expecting a big run from our lad prompted a good group of owners to attend the meeting.  Phil & Sarah were joined by Paul, Kate & Arthur, Ben & Nic, Rory & Sally, Peter & Deborah and Lawrence.

The ground was perfect and Neil was confident that the horse was fit and ready, leading to confidence all around that we would get a big race.

Newton Abbot offered a nice owner and trainer bar near to the parade ring and this was our base for the afternoon with regular forays either up to the back of the stand or round the stand to the area in front of the winning post.  Our race came around quickly and we headed into the parade ring.

The instructions from Neil to Noel were to settle The Way You Dance just behind the leaders and then bring him through in the home straight, but as the race started, it quickly became clear that this was not going to happen.  Noel started on the outside and looked to receive a couple of bumps from the horse on his inner when he tried to move back in.  There were a couple of sketchy jumps on the first circuit and to the eye, TWYD was not travelling as sweetly as he had in the past when he came past the stands.  Down the back, he was still towards the rear on the outside, but turning out of the back straight another poor jump and another bump sent TWYD to the back of the field and he turned in almost last.  This was a complete contrast to his three previous runs when in each case he turned for home travelling the best of any runner.

The race was run and a couple more bumps in the home straight were the iceing on the cake of an eighth place finish.

In the unsaddling enclosure, Noel felt that a faster pace would have been helpful to us as he felt that the horses were tightly bunched and that TWYD was always looking for space.  He felt that TWYD was shying away from the other horses on occasion.  He reported that TWYDs jumping had seemed to get worse rather than better as the race progressed.  .

Neil was adamant that TWYD had not performed at anything like the level he was expecting and that we should just draw a line through the race.