Luke 140 syndicate update: the racehorse has improved conditioning after a month of easy work while the speaker recovered from hip surgery. Bradley Champagne has been handling daily training. The plan is a Pine Top preliminary in early February, then intermediate, then a 4-star at Chattahoochee Hills to qualify for Kentucky or Le Moulin.
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This is a video for the Luke 140 syndicate. Well, everyone, Luke's been humming along very, very well. I know I sent you a video about a month ago showing off Luke's tempi changes and he's been getting better and better. You can see his frame is a little bit rounder and a little bit softer now. And I made the comment last time when we were doing the tempe changes that he was a little bit sort of above the bit and a little bit not quite through and over the back. And as you can see here, thanks to my beautiful wife, he's a little bit rounder in his shape and just the consistent work's been great. We only gave Luke about a week off. We gave him one week's vacation. A couple reasons he didn't really do that much at the end of this year. He didn't get pushed too hard. We did some really easy baby, I think, prelim horse trials, which I went even slow on them, so really his legs weren't knocked around. The other part is he's a bloody lunatic if you give him too much time off. So he had a one week off when we were on vacation. The family, we went our way over Christmas. And other than that, Luke hasn't missed the day. We've been gently working away on his fitness work. The weather has been kind for the majority of November and December, so he's been out on the track and just doing these long, slow canters. I actually had a hip and groin surgery in late November, so I was at out of action basically all of December. Luckily for me, I've got a very brave Canadian rider called Bradley Champagne that has got a good partnership with Luke. And so he did a lot of Luke's fitness work and all of his hacking and whatnot. And very grateful to Brad because once Luke gets wound up, he can be a wild man. He looks very relaxed and quiet in these videos, but there's a lot of editing sometimes when he sees a ghost. I feel like this year was a very exciting year for us. Obviously, last year was just a long year of rehabbing and then building his fitness up and bringing him back into work and then doing a couple of baby events. And now it's time to get going. I think I've entered Luke for the first Pine Top in early February. I'll just do one prelim there and then a couple weeks later I'll put him up to the intermediate level. That's sort of, I think, the second or third weekend in February. After that, I'M toying with the idea of taking him to Chattahoochee Hills to do a four short. I believe we've got to do a four short to get re qualified for five star. At the moment, my goal would be to run him@kentucky5star. There's also a second option, which is Le Moulin five Star. If I feel like he's not going quite well enough or he's not quite fit enough or something, there is a little bit of a plan B there. All my competitions are going to be a little bit slow and easy and cautious. Just looking after his legs. And he's not the sort of horse that you can run fast. It just. It winds him up too much and then he's. He gets really wild and silly. And then the next event, a tough one. But saying all that, there's a time we got to pull the trigger and that will be at the five Star. We'll go for a break there. And we know he's capable, obviously. Year and a half ago, he was amazing around the Moulin, finishing fourth against some of the best in the world. So at the moment, his legs look fantastic. He's very healthy and sound. But all the work we've been doing so far have been pretty slow and easy. Peter Wild was good enough to come up to the farm on Monday, and he jump schooled a lot of the horses. I was the sort of assistant rider warming them up on the flat for him. And then he did. He did all the jumping. Luke was fantastic. This would probably be the third or fourth time he jumped since I've been out of action. Peter jumped him one other time and then Brad just hopped him through a couple gymnastic exercises. I was really, really pleased of how well Luke jumped. Anyway, guys, we're going to head to Aiken, South Carolina this week. Luke will be down there on the weekend and we'll get him all settled in at Stableview and we'll slowly start building him up for all the competitions. Anyway, wishing everyone a Happy New Year. And I've got a baby that's about to burst into tears, so I've got to run. Looking forward to catching up with all of you. See ya.
