Getting ready to come back home...

Unfortunately, our time is coming to an end in Newmarket. We have really had a great time here and I’m looking forward to the day that I get to come back. We will be finishing up on Thursday and my flight back to California leaves London on Saturday morning. I’m sure I’ll miss the rest of the team during our winter break but I’m looking forward to spending time with my family and going back to Santa Anita for a few days.

The course work is winding down and all of us are relieved to have our insurance assignment finished. I learned a lot while doing this assignment but it definitely wasn’t easy. I’ve never had to value stallions before or think about insurance policies for them, so it was great to learn about these areas. In this upcoming week we’re just going on a lot of visits. I’m particularly looking forward to going to Juddmonte. We went to Shadwell’s Nunnery Stud last week and it was phenomenal. It’s great seeing all these different world class operations and seeing some of the things they do that makes them so successful.

The best thing that happened last week was the time that we spent at the British Racing School. It was a ton of fun. Although, going to the BRS was primarily to continue filling our NVQ (National Vocational Qualification) requirements they also taught us to exercise racehorses. In the mornings we arrive and were put on the simulator to practice our riding position. Then we were given a riding lesson in the indoor arena for an hour. By the end of the week they had us cantering on the round gallop. It was phenomenal. I wish I was about 50 lbs lighter so I could continue riding when I get back to America.

Things in Newmarket have continued to go well. The Tattersalls sales have been going on for the past week or so and you would’ve never realized that the economy is still in a recession. The foal sale just finished the other day and the figures were incredible. It was like a feeding frenzy, at times the opening bid for a foal was more than what many people thought the foal would make in the ring. It will be very interesting to see what the yearling market will be like next year. The mare sale has continued in the same fashion. There was a real buzz around the sales pavilion and it was a lot of fun watching the bids volley back and forth. I went around the sale with Matt Coleman, a former Flying Start trainee and an up and coming bloodstock agent. I learned a lot during the time I spent with him.

We have had some really phenomenal lectures and visits since my last post. One of my favourites was the media training workshop that we had with Rishi Persad from BBC Sport. It was nice to get media training from somebody with as much experience as Rishi. The visit to Cheveley Park Stud was another memorable visit. It was great to see a stud with such a history of success and to see Pivotal in the flesh. We had some lectures on business law, bloodstock insurance, as well as business and financial planning. I enjoyed learning about these areas since I don’t have much experience in them.

We’ve also been learning about international travel of horses for racing, breeding, and selling. It seems quite fitting to be learning about this now with the Japan Cup just being run over the weekend, the Hong Kong Cup coming up, and then the Dubai Racing Carnival taking place after that. We’ve been learning about so many different areas from the best transport practices to international regulation of horse transport to organization of the international racing carnivals. These lectures have really opened up my eyes to how global the sport is and all of the options for horses to race in. I would love to be able to participate in these events one day.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been getting up early in the mornings and going to Jeremy Noseda’s yard. The times that the lectures have started have been late enough that I can get up and go over to watch the horses train before we start. Jeremy’s been very nice to let me come whenever I have time and watch how his operation works. I’ve already learned a lot from him. It’s great to see how the horses are trained over here. There are so many different things that they do in the mornings and it’s all fascinating to see. It’s been fantastic to be in a training environment again.