A lovely warm afternoon, what a summer we have had, so many beautiful days up here, wonderful mornings for exercising horses and we’ve escaped the severity of the heat waves. No runners since the first week end in June, hence no blog, a record three months of silence on this channel – a relief for many I am sure.
The horses did really well this summer, plenty of grass and the sun on their backs
Our first runners should be at Perth on 23rd September but I have resurfaced to highlight a special event this weekend. In some ways we are veterans of the Great North Run, the world’s largest half marathon that gathers the best part of 60,000 people to Tyneside this weekend every year. My role of course is restricted to support crew but our sons Johnny and Kit have both run very well on several ocassions over recent years, often raising plenty of money for the Injured Jockeys Fund. What makes it particularly special this year is that they are going to be joined by their sister Lucy who whilst a jockey was a regular beneficiary of their wonderful assistance. The IJF then stepped in big time when she suffered her career ending injury at Newcastle in November 2020 and played a massive part in her rehabilitation. She still regularly goes to Oaksey House in Lambourn and we couldn’t thank them enough for their help. She is of course fund raising for them along with her brothers and they have set up a page https://ajbellgreatnorthrun2026.enthuse.com/pf/lucy-kit-johnny-ijf – we would be thrilled if you were able to donate something to support such a worthy cause. Our conditional jockey Dom is also taking part but sadly no Bruce who had been training for it (n/r self cert).
Kit & Johnny at the Great North Run in 2022
We have had a busy old time of it over the last few months, we did a particularly deep clean and repaint of all the barns and have just completed an extension of our main all weather gallop. Lots of time devoted to finding horses and really pleased with the eight we have managed to buy from a wide variety of sources. We have refocussed our training methods with an emphasis on more precision re speed and most importantly made some very good haylage. The horses have been coming on nicely; we have been a little more patient with them and they and are just where I would like them to be – strong, keen and very much in the zone with their work. They are carrying a bit more condition than they usually would at this time of year thanks to the good summer and our steady approach. It will be fascinating to see how our early runners perform and that will give us a good benchmark re where we are with the majority of the string. Bring it on, have a great weekend everyone.
The extension to our main gallop was completed today – two weeks ahead of schedule
Kit & Dom this morning in their IJF tops