Back to the horses

Our mare Flo is in foal - good girl that she is - so we hope for a healthy, correct (all four legs pointing in the right direction) colt foal next year by first season sire, Danbird.

Danbird is a son of Danehill, who is also sire of Dansili, the sire of Rail Link which won today's Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe so it is the sire line of the moment. Danehill himself died a couple of years ago so his sons are going to grow in popularity as stallions themselves. This is the Danzig branch of Northern Dancer so they get no better in my view.

Flo's yearling is by Carnival Dancer so this is the Sadler's Wells branch of Northern Dancer. Sadler's Wells has been a lot slower to have a serious stallion son but there are more than high hopes for Montjeu and Galileo. Both stand in Ireland and are more than a little out of our price range so we settled for Carnival Dancer - a first season sire when the yearling filly was conceived and this year's foal is a full brother. The filly is the better put together and will be a bargain for someone at the sales at the end of October.

Our other yearling is still struggling with life at night on her own so will now be staying at home. The trauma of being orphaned so young is obviously still with her and needs a lot more time and patience. Don't expect to see her on a racecourse until she is at least three but do expect to see a goat or sheep in close proximity !

The paragraph above originally ended this but after posting I checked the rest of today's results from Longchamp. If I have any regular readers with good memories they may recall that Carnival Dancer has a half-brother called Desert Lord, and he won today's sprint race the Prix de l'Abbaye at 25-1, and yet again I let it run unbacked !!!!!