Wednesday 2nd July, 2025

Fighting Poet (pictured) is running at Epsom this evening in the mile and a half handicap run at 8.30pm – the race he was runner up in last year.  He has had two runs recently in amateur races and appears to have come out of them well.  Billy Loughnane who has won on him is booked ride and hopefully he will run well for The Adlestrop Club.

We have entered Shibuya Song and Santa Sabina at Worcester on Monday.  Look forward to Shibuya Song returning to the course where she won last season and I am sure the ground will suit Santa Sabina better on Monday than on her last visit to the track.

We lost two greats of the training profession recently in Barry Hills and D. Wayne Lukas.  I had the pleasure of knowing Barry for many years and he was a one off who was great company, had an excellent sense of humour and achieved an enormous amount in his 88 years.

With resilience and determination like no other, he has certainly left his legacy and will be remembered fondly by all who knew him.  He would have been the first to admit that he was the luckiest man to have met his wife Penny who nursed him through his long illness with grace and resolution.

I first saw D.Wayne Lukas when interviewed on BBC Sportsnight by the fearless Hugh McIlvanney many decades ago.  Hugh had an unrivalled antenna for gravitating to sporting greatness and realised that in the American, there was a man with a rare talent.  He was unique in American racing and there will be no finer entry into US racing’s Hall of Fame