Today's Racing

[Mentholdan]

It's Arc de Triomphe day today in Paris and it will probably be the last time we ever get to see the world's greatest racehorse "Enable" as she will probably be retired after today whatever the result. She has won 13 times from 14 runs in her career, the only time she lost was after a 5 month break. She will be ridden by the world's greatest jockey Frankie Dettori. The other prestige race today is the sprint, the "Prix du Labbaye" The favourite for this is another English trained horse Battash who has won 3 of his 4 races this season. Its live on TV so I'll be having a bet, it's something to watch. 😁😁.  The picture I've uploaded is a trophy my horse won after winning at Lingfield, there was an option of an extra £200 in prize money or the trophy of a whisky decanter and six glasses. I've had this since 1989 and it's never been out of the box. In fact the only people to see it apart from my family will be anyone looking at this picture. 

[Kingjim92]

Stunning mate is there any chance I could watch the race if you have a video of the race congrats on that I myself could only dream of owning a horse 👌 shame about enable

[Mentholdan]

Sadly I lost the video when I moved back from Spain. The race was in 1989, Racetech kindly sent me a video of the race and I should have transferred it to DVD. In those days I had the money, I couldn't afford a hair on its mane now. We paid 3600 gns for her and training fees were £200 per month. Myself and my friend Peter went 50/50. You have to buy the colours, 'silks' and pay to register them of course, then there's vets fees, travelling fees, entry fees for each race the horse is entered in. On occasions she may have been entered in three or four races in any one month and then not run in any of them. Blacksmiths have to be paid to fit the racing shoes and even the dentist is needed from time to time. Only 1 in every 1000 horses pay their way, its about the same as buying a bonus. 😁😁 I was lucky because my best friend Howard Jenkins was a jockey who worked at the stables, "his older brother John is still training to this day" he even married a "Miss World" Some people get all the luck. Anyway I spoke to Howard when we went for a beer one night and asked him to keep his eye on the horse and let me know if she was worth keep g, after all she was only a baby when we bought her and wouldn't be ready for raci g for another year. Thqts a lot of bills in the meantime. So he kept me updated on her progress and said she was good enough to have some fun with. "A trainer wouldn't normally tell you if your horse was useless, he wants you to keep pati g you monthly bill. You never know how good your horse is until it has raced, it could be a world beater on the gallops and never put a foot forward on a Racecourse. Many years ago an Arab consortium paid £6 million for an unraced yearling called Snaffi Dancer, turned it couldn't even pull a cart and never ever raced. 

We had a lot of fun with her and she stopped racing at 4 years old and we sold her to the stable girl who looked after her for a knock down price.