July went well – any month that yields 11 winners has to be counted a success! Moones My Name came good, winning twice; she’ll go to York for a fillies handicap. Redvers also won twice – at Bath and Lingfield. He has been busy, but should continue to progress. Farlow won at Warwick, and Abacist at Chepstow. Cultural Desert got himself and our assistant trainer, Charlie Duckworth, off the mark at Salisbury in an amateur race, and Caelis won again, this time at Epsom. Some promising two year old performances included wins on debut by Compton and Moon Pearl. Radiomarelli won at Windsor and Frog Hollow looked a nice prospect at Nottingham – which he is! August is a frantic month when it comes to fixtures – finding opportunities tends not to be a problem although the right one is more problematic. However I am hopeful that we can match July’s total of winners. My feeling is that we are winning our share – just not the bigger pots. Hopefully they will come. The saddest moment of this month was the death of Tattersalls Ireland chairman George Mernagh (with the loss of Rewilding second). A lovely man who was exceptionally kind, he was liked by everyone who knew him – a rare thing in this business. I was interested by Professor Tim Morris’ interview in today’s Racing Post. He is the man in charge of welfare in our sport. He alluded to the aftermath of the Grand National – and how at the time he thought the washing down process had gone very well. Only afterwards did the portrayal of it on BBC show it up as a PR disaster. Later the same month at Badminton every horse had an electrolyte drip before the cross country, run in similar heat – with obvious results. But because no racehorse is allowed anything other than feed and water on raceday it couldn’t happen before the National. A ridiculous state of affairs in anybody’s book, and a situation that continues because of the positive tests concerning Nicky Henderson and David Flood (both tests concerned performance enhancing drugs that were given on raceday). Drug testing in this country is plenty stringent enough – the permitting of electrolytes is hardly setting a dangerous precedent.