OUR VALENTINA: LARNE'S FIRST LADY

So off up North went the Horsplay Syndicate, to the Newlands Farm Stables of Stuart Crawford, who (because you're a very well behaved reader), you've already read about on a previous page on this marvellous site.  At this point of proceedings not only did we change stables but we also changed the sex of our horses! (Not by magic I should add),  but by Stuart going to the August Sales at Fairyhouse and for less magic beans than usual, coming back with a bay filly by Shantou and a mother whose kids had also shown an ability to know where the winning post was.

Named Our Valentina because, well sometimes syndicate democracy just works that way, but known in dispatches to her fan club as R.V, Stuart felt we had a nice raw prospect on our hands, who over time might have a race or two in her. That said there was still some time to go before getting to that point in her young racing career and so the immediate plan was simply to introduce RV to the racecourse and hope she liked what she saw...

But this is the sport of racing...so naturally things weren't that straightforward! Another trip on the rollercoaster of racehorse ownership awaited us all....

A glorious summer evening, a solid but not spectacular list of competitors and Down Royal Racecourse full of optimistic Horsplay Syndicate members....what could go wrong? Well Our Valentina, obviously aware of how debuts had panned out for our horses to date, decided to raise (or more accurately lower) the bar even further by falling in a flat race....Yes, when beginning to threaten the leaders with less than half a mile to go, our girl, while trying to do her best impression of a camel threading herself through the eye of a needle became intimately acquainted with Planet Earth, leaving a lot of worried faces looking nervously for signs it was no more than an unfortunate slip. 

Thankfully, that proved to be the case and in reality, we actually had a lot of positives to take out of the section of the race where RV had decided to use all four of her hooves as had indeed nature intended. Therefore the Horsplay Syndicate headed into the winter of 2016/17 knowing we had a horse with a splash of talent and a couple of dashes of potential too! While Stuart still placed Our Valentina in 3 more flat races in the hope he could take advantage of running amongst her own sex and against less experienced rivals, it would be hurdles where she would excel in due course!

While it's fair to say that Our Valentina wasn't necessarily the most natural of jumpers when it came to hurdles, what she lacked in technique, she clearly made up for in tenacity. In 3 runs over hurdles, she had already displayed a real fighting spirit at the business end of her races and so by the time she lined up for an EBF Mares Maiden Hurdle at Navan in April 2017, she had already proved herself to be a hardy little madam! 

With Gold Cup winning jockey Paul Townend aboard, Our Valentina produced a brilliantly resilient performance, coming through the field in the latter stages and just getting up on the post to claim her maiden victory and a tidy pot for the Horsplay Syndicate to boot!

6 months later, we saw another fighting performance to capture the inaugural Mares Northern Lights Hurdle Final (and several more magic beans for the syndicate's kitty), this time at Carlisle. 

But just as the future looked incredibly exciting for Our Valentina, fate intervened again. Though racing with distinction again at the Scottish Grand National Festival, a back injury curtailed her racing career, meaning it was an early trip to the breeding shed and as you can see from her gallery below, foaling a healthy filly by Court Cave!