Racing Blog
A day in the life of Gay
Life as a racehorse trainer has both physical and mental demands like no other profession. Take an average day for Gay, the alarm during the summer months goes at 4:30am, this will change as the winter sets in and the days become shorter, which on the face of it sounds great, however, she has to work even harder in order to complete her routine tasks.
After a quick shower, Gay will start her day, come rain or shine at around 5:45am, with the intention that the first string will leave her yard by 6am and undoubtedly she will be on the lead horse to the gallops.
She will then ride a further two lots and supervise the four lot, whilst doing declarations for forth coming races, talking to owners and arranging jockeys, transport, the vet and blacksmith.
After what most people would regard as a day’s work from 5:45am in the morning till lunch time, Gay will either head off racing or work in the office to evening stables, at which all the horses in the yard are fed and checked over, before her day if based at her yard comes to an end at 7pm
Interestingly, being a small yard by Newmarket standards with some 40 horses in her care, Gay often drives the horse box to the races, which is an event in itself, the difference being the drive could take her 3/4/5hrs to a specific track and then the return similar, which if she is attending a night meeting after an early start can be exhausting.
During the month past, her horses have been racing all over the country, but as she has always maintained the prize money for owners to chase in this country is particularly low.
Gay is far from afraid to take her chances all over the world and decided, to take a really nice juvenile JUDAS JO and an older horse LAYLINE to Sweden, as Gay said ‘The chances are you will pick up prize money and the hospitality is excellent.’
In the events the inevitable happened, JUDAS JO won a decent conditions race, netting the owner around £20,000 and LAYLINE just didn’t act on the surface. Now consider the logistics of arranging the trip, the horses travel to Germany by road, then go by boat to Sweden, the whole process takes about three or four days and obviously the same on the way back. Gay couldn’t afford the time, so her staff had to travel with the horse. Gay took a flight for the race and came back the next day.
In the pursuit of winners nothing is beyond her reach and she fears nothing. The week before Sweden, Gay was back in the plate, riding in the Legends race at Doncaster against a large contingent of former greats like Charlie Swan, George Duffield, Ray Cochrane, Thierry Gillet, John Reid, Steve Smith Eccles, Kevin Darley and others, but it was a woman who won the day, top American pilot Julie Krone-Gay finished sixth, which she was more than pleased with.
