THE TIN MAN HACKS UP

Although the official winning margin was only a head THE TIN MAN won The Gp3 Hackwood Stakes at Newbury on Saturday with a certain amount of ease. Tom Queally had a plan and he stuck to it even though it was not easy watching for all of us. When he made his move a furlong and a half out THE TIN MAN sliced through the field like butter and finished hard held and without Tom having to pick up his whip. This would have been an excellent confidence boost to THE TIN MAN and hopefully he will go on to bigger and better things. We think he is a horse with an enormous amount of talent when things have gone smoothly for him. Unfortunately we had not had a smooth run into the Diamond Jubilee with a couple of little things going wrong. We had thought we could get away with it but it was not to be. People started to write him off after that which was very unfair, as other than his first race which we do not include these days as he was gelded days afterwards, he has only run badly twice, once at York when he was coming back after having had anti-biotics after a bad scope and the other at Royal Ascot. He has won five of his nine races.

He trotted up this morning and looked absolutely fine. He will have a little canter tomorrow and an easy few days after that before we think where we are going to head next. We would love to have him right for the Haydock Sprint on September 3rd and The Qipco Champion Sprint on October 15th. He is also in the Nunthorpe Stakes at York on August 19th and The Phoenix Stakes at the Curragh on August 7th. It is very exciting to be talking about such races for the first horse bought for our Fred Archer Racing partnership.

Just in case you are wondering why he is named THE TIN MAN it has absolutely nothing to do with The Wizard of Oz. We are immensely proud to be living and training from the yard that the great nineteenth century jockey Fred Archer built. When we decided to put some racing partnerships together decided to name them after him having received permission from his great great grandson Alex Tossetti. Fred Archers nickname was THE TIN MAN so we named our first horse after him.

Pat our old dog had his annual cut and blow dry on Friday afternoon which was very lucky as Faye Bainbridge took a picture of him by a champagne bottle when the lads had a few drinks after evening stables last night. Faye must have tweeted or facebooked it and it ended up in the Racing Post this morning. He is now nearly seventeen and is so exhausted to have fame at long last he has slept all day long. You may think that Pat is a funny name for a dog but Tom who is now nineteen but was two at the time named him after Postman Pat. Pat is now deaf but always seems to hear the clank of the feed bowls.

HORS DE COMBAT ran an excellent race yesterday to finish second to Franklin D when having to give a lot of weight away. He had the ground he likes and he has also won and run well at Newmarket before. He looks in great form at home so we hope that he will win soon.