ROB'S SHOUT - HEAVY GOING BUT A HAPPY OUTCOME

By Robert Heathcote | Thursday, July 4, 2013

Robert Heathcote is the leading racehorse trainer in Brisbane. 'Rob's Shout' - the personal blog of the multi-premiership and Group 1 winning trainer will appear every Thursday on HRO, workload permitting.

Hello again,

Gee nice to see a few consecutive days of sunshine for South East Queensland. Mind you we still did race on a Heavy 10 track at Doomben on Wednesday.

As much as wet weather racing stresses me out, my stable actually had a good day winning a couple (shoulda been three) and a couple of seconds.

It was jockey Bobby El-Issa’s first day back riding at a Metropolitan race track for over two years and he got the seat on three of my runners. It’s well documented he has served a lengthy disqualification for a poorly judged ride on Bold Glance and fair to say it was a mixed return for the hoop on his first day back.

Bobby is somewhat of a polarizing character. Love him or hate him, he has certainly had his fair share of controversy during his career with numerous stints on the sidelines for disciplinary reasons.

He has been back in the saddle for the past six months on the country circuit and fair to suggest it was not the perfect return he had hoped for. Bob is a talented jockey and he has worked very hard to get to where he is now and he realizes he still has a lot of work to do to re-establish himself as a top metropolitan jockey.

His first few rides back last Wednesday suggested he might have been a bit over-anxious with a few tactical errors early in the card but he bounced back with a well-judged ride to win the last.

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Bob El-Issa has paid a huge penalty for his past indiscretions and he knows that.

The Racing industry may well be forgiving at times but it doesn’t forget so Bobby has to continue to work hard to regain the faith of the trainers and owners.

I have no doubt that he will be a bit Metropolitan ‘ring rusty’ and prone to pulling the trigger a bit early until his timing comes back but I am confident his talent and ability will shine through. For his sake I that needs to happen quickly.

I will support Bobby with rides but no different to any of the other riders who do the work … but he has to repay my faith in him with commitment and professional endeavour.

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As it turned out, Wednesday was a good day for the stable.

I had feared the Heavy 10 track would put pay to most of my runner’s chances but out of frustration with this never ending wet period, I decided to run four of my eight acceptors!

Two winners and a couple of solid seconds was a good return so I went home satisfied.

It is a shame when the fields get absolutely decimated with scratching’s as we saw on Wednesday which even gave us one race of only three runners.

It makes it tough for punters and it’s probably not even a good spectacle with the only beneficiaries being the connections of the three runners, but any restrictions on minimum numbers for a race would be unfair on those who chose to run and not to scratch due to the track conditions.

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It was quite amazing how wet the track was. Sure, we have had plenty of rain but I did have a walk on it on Tuesday arvo and it looked like it would hold up ok and race uniformly as it did.

The times showed it was a genuine Heavy 10 but it was safe and fair.

I guess it just emphasizes just how waterlogged the ground is after 6 months of steady, constant wet weather.

As I alluded to earlier, it was also a bit out of frustration that I chose to run a few of mine with the backlog of horses all looking for runs and of course dry tracks.

Fingers crossed the weather can soon give our industry some respite.

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Princess Lyca winning the last race yesterday brought up the stables 99th winner for the season.

Pretty heady stuff indeed and I still have to pinch myself at times that it has been such another good year.

Of course it comes with the support of my many owners, my hard working staff, a tolerant wife and many long hours, but ask any trainer and they will tell you … plenty of hard work and a fair slice of luck helps.

It’s normally this time of year I take a short holiday to recharge the batteries. No plans this year to go anyway but maybe a short break a bit later on.

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It’s another busy day for us on Saturday with maybe eight or nine runners.

Not too sure if we can bring up our 100th winner for the season but a few decent chances with Tiger Jet looking a good chance for the big maiden, Thirsty For Blood is backing up after a gutsy win last Saturday, Ballybit is an interesting newcomer to the yard first up in the 1500m race and Griffon and Funtantes are both extremely capable if they race to their best.

Again, how well the track at Head Quarters recovers will be the key to our chances.

Kind regards and good health to you.

Robert

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