Gap Farm December

I was boxloading for Mol’s team so didn’t get to see much of their racing or times, but they did look good from where I was stood and lost some of their races by a nose, really unlucky! Mol had a great time anyway since she was running over 9″ with her partner-in-crime Bails.

For various reasons, I roped Emma into running Kim in Barneys for me. I felt kind of bad afterwards as Kim really wasn’t running her best! Definitely not down to Emma’s handling – which was excellent as always! – just a case of Kim’s jump fitness has dropped off and so she wasn’t able to power over the hurdles as she usually does. I got to run her when Dylan was out in the last race of the day anyway, and I could certainly tell her jump speed was off. Her ground speed was fine, so I think we just need to get back to training and get her running 12″ on a regular basis.

Dylan, on the other hand, was fantastic! He was super confident and comfortable as he was running between Lucy and Jet, or Lucy and Kim, all girls he loves! The difference is incredible, he powers into the first hurdle without hesitating and it makes such a difference to his singles times. He ran lead in the afternoon and clocked a 4.740 line-to-line (over 12″), which is the fastest he’s ever run. In fact, he clocked 4.7s on every run he did when running lead, which is excellent. This fact is still making me smile three days later! His boxturn was not excellent, so we still have something to work on. I feel fairly confident saying that if we can train Dylan to a better turn and he runs with the same enthusiasm he did this past weekend, we can get him down to running 4.5s kind of times. I never thought that would be possible!

Dylan and Kim’s team came 1st in Division 2, after some very close racing, and Mollie’s team came 3rd after some even more close racing that really could have gone either way, so all in all a good day!