Lambourn in a Hurry
Welcome to our first, and hopefully last, Virtual Open Day. I hope that you will enjoy the contents on this site, but that we will be welcoming you back live next Good Friday.
Everything except the Silent Auction and Raffle, both to close on Friday 9th April at 5 p.m., will remain on site until April next year. Trainers will be able to update their pages during the year.
As it has been for everyone, Lambourn has endured a nightmare past 12 months. However, we are extremely fortunate that racing has been able to continue. Life has certainly not been easy for our workforce, but they have all gone about everything with such an excellent attitude; we are extremely proud of them, as well as most grateful.
Again, there have been a top number of winners, and plenty of big victories, but what has been so pleasing is that some of the latter have been for some of the lesser known, smaller yards.
On the Flat, speed has very much been the order of the day. Group One successes – Roger Teal’s July Cup with Oxted, Charles Hills’s Kings Stand and Nunthorpe with Battaash, Clive Cox’s Commonwealth Cup with Golden Horde and Middle Park with Supremacy, Archie Watson’s British Champion Sprint with Glen Shiel, (ridden by the brilliant star, now and of the future, and rider of many Lambourn winners, Hollie Doyle) – have all scorched the turf. It has been great to see William Muir achieve two Group 2 wins with Pyledriver, who will surely compete successfully at the top level again in 2021.
In the last National Hunt year, Nicky Henderson was once more crowned Champion Trainer, following a host of big winners. Recently, at the National Hunt Meeting at Cheltenham, Shishkin and Chantry House were his Grade One winners, both ridden by Nico de Boinville, as they, almost alone, did their best against the seemingly endless avalanche of successful Irish invaders. All our other Trainers also contributed to another very successful past twelve months.
Well done and thank you to The Jockey Club Estates team, under Will Riggall, for doing such a fine job with the gallops and training facilities.
On this site, all the content is free to you. However, I do hope that you will be very generous entering the Silent Auction and Raffle, where there are some fantastic items and opportunities offered. There are donation boxes too. The Open Day, so generously sponsored by the
Peter O’Sullevan Trust, and supported by many other generous people and Companies, is the main fundraiser for the welfare of the Valley’s stable staff and their families, via our Registered Charity, The Lambourn Valley Housing Trust. All of the profits made each year go for their welfare; this includes clubs and other facilities, and donations to the Thames Valley Air Ambulance which is not Government funded; they give us instant help in the case of any accident on the gallops or elsewhere. Thus, any financial support which you give will be supporting a very worthy cause.
I hope you enjoy this Virtual Open Day, and that we will see you back live next year. The date is Good Friday, 15th April 2022. Do please try and come because your support means so much to us.
Thank you all very much
Mark Smyly
