Light At The End Of The Tunnel

The other night I was messaging a friend (virtual interaction is basically all that life has become over the past 4 months) and I paraphrased a famous Game Of Thrones line when I said:

"Summer is coming."

And it is.  Spring has officially sprung: foals are arriving, a trickle at first but soon the floodgates will open and social media will be awash with photos of the next generation of harness racing superstars; racehorses are well into their 2021 training regimes and as soon as this weekend the first of the qualifier and workout days is scheduled to take place at Amman Valley, with York, Tir Prince and Corbiewood all due to open their doors for organised pre-season preparation shortly after.

The light at the end of the tunnel is Saturday 24th April, the planned season opener at York Harness Raceway, followed by Tir Prince the following weekend on May 1st and then before we know it, we're fully back into the swing of things and closer to something resembling normality than we'll have seen in what feels like a very long time.

OK, so the world may not have returned to normal by the end of this month, but my world will almost have.  Because for the best part of six months each year, I live for the weekends.  Not, as some may think, because I like to go mad on a Friday and/or Saturday night on the drink, but because I am graced with the opportunity to travel up and down the country doing and being around something I love: racing.

I make no secret of the fact that I find the winter notoriously difficult, even pre-Covid.  For the past few years I've suffered with SAD, which year-on-year has become increasingly worse.  I voiced my concerns to my parents heading into this winter that it was going to be the worst one yet for me, basing my fears on past winters but also the added factor of working from home.  On top of the reduced hours of daylight, and starting and finishing my work day in darkness, this winter I also had to face the reality of little to no face-to-face human interaction for extended periods of time, save obviously the person I live with.

I am by nature a sociable person; even though I work with people who have absolutely no interest in the things that I am obsessed with, working from home through most of 2020 made me realise that actually I had a better personal relationship with my colleagues than I had accounted for.  I missed them.  What got me through that from June to November was going racing every single weekend (bar the one I missed to go yurting in Aberdeenshire).  Racing, and the people within it, literally kept me sane in 2020.

Driving home after the last meeting of the season on November 8th I tried to focus my attention on all of the moments I had so thoroughly enjoyed from the summer; during the month of December avid followers of my photography Facebook page will have noticed that I did a photo advent calendar - a photo posted every day from December 1st through to Christmas Eve with an explanation as to why it meant something to me.  This was simply a tactic to distract myself from the fact that the 2021 season felt like an eternity away.

And then, with Christmas only a few days away, we were plunged into national lockdown once again.  Plans I had tentatively made for my weekends in January and February were suddenly off the cards.  I operate by a system of borderline obsessive planning and having things to look forward to. I count down the days to whatever I have marked in my diary first.  All of these small milestones fill the time until before I know it, the new season has started.  But 2021 got off on the wrong foot, and May could not have felt further away.

Fear not dear readers, this post isn't all doom and gloom.  It is however the chance for me to give you some of the relevant background information to assist you in understanding why I am the way I am when you see me during the summer.  I know I'm over the top, I know I take extra to the next level, I know it sometimes seems like the things I say and the posts I write can't possibly be genuine because who really gets that excited about watching other people's horses race around an oval for a couple of laps?  Trust me, I'm not the 'try hard' some of you might have me pegged as - it really is just the way I am.  I could bottle it up and try to behave in a slightly more socially acceptable manner instead of acting like a cheerleader on ecstasy but at some point along my journey within this sport I decided to take the risk of revealing who I really am in the hope that the acceptance and welcome I had received from the first day I set foot in a paddock as a groom would be extended again once people realised I was a little bit weirder than I first let on.  So far, so good....I think.

Speaking of welcomes, despite having to scrap most of my planned stable visits this year, I have been able to get out a couple of times along with my camera to visit my sponsored drivers (whilst observing social distancing rules and regs).  The first visit of 2021 was to Ayr Standardbreds when I dropped off one of my squad for the season with the O'Neil family.  AFAN EJO (or Joe as he's known) was my 'bargain buy' at the Brightwells Sale back in 2018, and after cutting his training short last year due to the uncertainty surrounding racing going ahead, this year we decided to entrust him to our friend Hugh O'Neil Jnr for his first season of racing.  I was able to visit again 8 weeks later to see how he was progressing and catch up with everyone, as well as meet their entire team which in addition to Joe, consists of dual STAGBI Future Broodmares winner last year AYR EMPRESS, Junior Welsh Dragoness winner AYR AMBITION, AYR BEACH and a horse Elizabeth [O'Neil] won in a raffle, EASY TIGER.

Ayr Empress & Hugh O'Neil Jnr

Ayr Empress

Ayr Beach & Michael O'Neil

Ayr Beach

Afan EJO & Hugh O'Neil Jnr

Afan EJO

Easy Tiger & Hugh O'Neil

Easy Tiger

I also managed to fit in my first ever visit to Dreamgait Stables, home to Evenwood Stud and the Nicholson family.  At the turn of the year I announced that Hugh O'Neil Jnr and Joseph Riley would be joining the ranks of Sarah Thomas Equine Photography as sponsored drivers, alongside the original: John Henry Nicholson.  So this visit was long overdue to see my little sidekick in his natural habitat.  We rather cleverly managed to arrange it to land on his sister, Savannah's, birthday so she was treated to a photoshoot with her special boy, DIAMANT DE GODREL as well.

Now if you've followed my blog for the past few years, you'll have noticed that as time has gone on the posts have become less and less frequent until, in 2020, there was only one post which acted as a full season review featuring my personal highlights.  Gone are the days when I would post a weekly roundup of the previous weekend's race meetings from across the country.  I'm sure I touched upon the reasons for this in that sole post last autumn, but to recap it is largely due to the fact that in this day and age, people want to watch rather than read.  It isn't so much that the art of writing is dying, but that as someone wanting to share my views, opinions and experiences I have to move with the times.  Video is where it's at.  Through the live stream reviews, The Sulky Show and The Chico & Sarah Show I've been able to tick all the boxes that I needed to, in far less time than it takes to sit and compose an appropriate and well thought out update on here.  Writing has, for the largest part, become an obsolete activity.

However, following my day trip to see the Nicholson's, I felt compelled to write again.  I'm rarely short of words to describe anything but even though three weeks have passed since my visit, I'm still struggling to sum up exactly how much I enjoyed myself.  The combination of the first warm, sunny day of the year, a barn full of racehorses to be introduced (or in some cases, reintroduced) to, and the opportunity to photograph people working at something they love made for the perfect day.  Add to that the stories that were shared over the course of the day and I wouldn't be exaggerating if I said I could have spent the remainder of the weekend there.

First and foremost, this is a family which absolutely loves what they do.  From the moment I arrived it was clear to see how much pride they take in the horses they breed and train and the place from which they ply their trade.  I mentioned to Georgina later on in the afternoon how it hadn't gone unnoticed that during my initial tour of the barn, as we stopped at each stable to meet its inhabitant I wasn't given a rundown of pedigree or race records but a quick synopsis of personality traits.  People who don't have insider access to the horse racing industry (Thoroughbred or Standardbred) often have this misconceived idea that it's a numbers game, that the horses involved are nothing more than cogs in a machine.  It couldn't be further from the truth.  The people who work with racehorses know them inside out; their likes and dislikes, their quirks and differences, all of the things that make them individuals.

I work with my own horses and I love it.  Yet watching others working with their horses is still as interesting to me as it would be had I never experienced it myself.  Not only do I count myself as incredibly lucky to be able to spend so much of my free time around horses, but even more so that people are so willing to let me into their lives to enjoy what they themselves enjoy.  Smarty often tells me that I 'would get a piece at anybody's door', which is a Scottish saying loosely meaning (in reference to me, at least) that I can talk my way in anywhere.  I like to think it's not the talking I do that yields such good relationships with people, but the listening.  People want to tell their stories, and I want to hear them.

One story in particular that has been alluded to in conversations with Savannah over the years is that of the stable's star trotter, DIAMANT DE GODREL.  Allocated to the family through the Trot Britain/Le Trot raffle scheme, Godrel came from France with a pretty lacklustre race record (his highest placed finish to that point being a third) and worse still, upon arrival was struck down with an illness that nearly cost him his life.  Through the dedicated care provided by his new owners, he overcame that and as time has gone on he has progressed to become arguably the country's leading Trotteur Francais (he has already been granted this title after the 2018 season and again for 2020).  In his first season of racing in 2018, he progressed up through the ranks to win the £10,000 Gold Final at Tir Prince, having never finished out of the first two up to that point, and in 2020 he not only landed the Triple Crown and the inaugural Trot of Gold Final, but also set a new British record over a mile and a half when winning the George Button Snr Memorial at York in October.  To date he is a winner of 11 races in the UK with earnings of nearly £30,000 on British soil.  Savannah told me the family felt incredibly lucky to be able to own and train a horse as good as he is, and yet I felt I had to remind her that from the outside looking in it looked a lot less like luck and a lot more like hard work, patience, perseverance and skill that had led to their success.  People don't necessarily want to own their success, being humble is the norm, but sometimes you have got to give yourself a pat on the back and say 'you know what, we did that'.

BHRC Trotter of the Year 2020

Godrel, John Henry & Rosie during their workout

The stable is more than just that one horse though.  Fan favourite Blason may live in the shadow somewhat of his stablemate but remains one of the most consistently competitive trotters to have come into the UK, racing at the highest level since his arrival in 2019.  New faces were in abundance also, with the three year old homebred pacer Evenwood Enforcer catching my eye, as well as new trotters Ebony Star and Hermione De Godrel (half sister to Diamant De Godrel).

Evenwood Enforcer

Hermione De Godrel

Ebony Star

Through all of the stories told, by John, Georgina, John Henry and Savannah, the one constant was the passion and enthusiasm they have for this sport.  It's almost impossible not to be lifted by that, and as I drove away at the end of a long day knowing fine well I was going to be home really late, I was on a total high.  Summer was coming; a summer full of promise, stories of success, triumph over adversity, potential being reached.

That day the light at the end of the tunnel got even brighter.

Now, with seven days to go to the first time I set foot on a racetrack this calendar year, I'm excited. Will the stars of 2020, aided by the penalty free season last year, shine as bright in 2021?  Will there be new faces amongst them setting the track alight?  How will my own horses fare?!  So many questions, so many possibilities, so many miles to travel and photos to edit.

The only thing I know for certain is this: I have missed you and I have missed racing.  Be prepared for how that manifests itself when I see you all for the first time.

Extra just got a little bit more extra.

Over and out,

#1 Scottish Groom