Tearing up the gallops and wishing Cathy the best

After a busy week before, we had no runners over the last seven days but it gave us a great opportunity to give the team a good workout and we had a full house galloping on Saturday morning.

Attain (blue coat) is entered at Epsom on Wednesday but with the weather and the race looking very competitive, there's a question mark over whether he will take his place on the Downs.

He matched strides over seven furlongs with Entrance (front) who is also due to run on the same day at Kempton. She ran a blinder last time to finish third and, on Paul Hanagan's reccommendation, we're stepping her up to 1m4f which will hopefully see her get her head back in front.

Obscured on the far side is Sail Home who had a three week break after a successful winter but came back so fat it's taken us a bit longer to get her back in shape. She's back to full fitness now though and goes to Doncaster on Saturday. 

Second up the Cambridge Road polytrack were Generous Genella (left), Verona Bay (middle) and Acer Diamonds (right).

Genella has been really impressing us since coming back from a long spell on the sidelines due to injury. If she can stay sound, I very much hope she can win on her comeback off a rating of just 50.

This was Verona Bay's first gallop since his return from injury too. He has grown a hell of a lot over the winter and is a lot stronger now too. He worked well and is very much a dark horse after only one run last season.

Acer Diamonds has been doing plenty of long, steady work as he is a very heavy horse but seems to be taking the faster work well. He has a huge and high knee action so soft ground should be ideal for him and he'll be running. again in the next fortnight.

Leading the way next was Faraway Land (yellow blinkers). She is a horse I have fallen in love with and for a very good reason - she has a lot of ability. She has had a few problems but I hope she can win a maiden even though Ross says she's big enough to go around Cheltenham next March. She's too precious for that!

On the nearside is Kampai who has a very likeable attitude and should be ready to run shortly.

In behind is Angel Of Mercy who, at the age of four, has yet to run but looks to be nearly ready now and she has been showing enough at home to suggest she can win a race in the right grade.

Just cantering on his own was Silver Alliance who finished third at Yarmouth last week. He seems fine after that run and it proved to us that he can handle soft ground which gives him plenty of options in the coming month with the weather so unpredictable at the moment.

There was a surprise addition to the string too as Sand Repeal made an appearance. Ross was feeling particularly brave and decided to drag him out of the field for a trot. He may be ten years old now but he still behaves like a yearling and that's why I hate riding him so much!

You may have noticed from the pictures that all the staff are looking very colour co-ordinated. With the Jockey Club setting a new rule that all yards must have uniformed hat silks, I bought a dozen for the staff to wear. The colour choice was simple - Feilden green. It will be interesting over the next couple of months to see what all the other yards go for and it will make John's job on the guided tours a hell of a lot easier to identify the different strings.

As I mentioned earlier, Entrance is set to run at Kempton on Wednesday and Cathy Gannon was booked to ride but she had a nasty incident riding out on Saturday morning where she ended up with a broken jaw. There was a particularly gruesome photo of her injury in some newspapers which showed the Irish girl with a swollen face and plenty of blood. Our very own Cathy (the cat) had blood round her mouth too but luckily it was because she was doing her job of keeping the yard's mouse population down.

It just goes to show though how sharp you have to be in this game. No sooner had Cathy fallen off that I had loads of jockey's agents ringing me for the ride on Entrance. I hope Cathy isn't on the sidelines for too long as she is one of the best jockeys around and seems to be very lucky for me.