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Your support makes all the difference.AS THE Flat season fades, so too several associations in the turf's fluid employment network, with varying degrees of amicability. Jason Weaver turned down a new retainer as Mark Johnston's first jockey but the pair remain on good terms. Michael Jackson, the owner of Morley Street, has ended his 14-year association with Toby Balding, the former champion hurdler's trainer, with little comment on either side, while Gay Kelleway is looking for a new base for her training operation in more unfortunate circumstances.
Kelleway has handed in her notice to Ron Dawson, the owner of Charnwood Stables in Newmarket, and will leave at the end of the month. Her departure follows a surprising message received by callers last Friday to a telephone tipping service run by Dawson. After the well-backed success of Kelleway's Wardara in the colours of the stable's secretary at Newmarket the previous day, Dawson claimed that he should have been told that the two-year-old was fancied, and stated that he had moved his horses in the yard elsewhere.
Dawson did not explain precisely why he should be entitled to information about another owner's horse, or for that matter the use of his tipping service to announce his dissatisfaction. For Kelleway, though, it was a clear sign that the time had come to move on. 'I'm glad things came to a head,' she said yesterday. 'I was thinking of moving either before or after Christmas anyway. Ron suggested that I share the yard with another trainer but I told him not to bother. Ron would be a good person to be a private trainer for,' she added, 'but I train my horses for their owners, not for him.'
As a temporary measure, Kelleway will move her string up Newmarket's Hamilton Road to Susan Piggott's Eve Lodge Stables, but the search for a permanent base will continue. 'Obviously my family are in Newmarket, but I would leave if the right offer came along,' she said. 'People have their horses with me because of who I am, not where I am.'
Another of Newmarket's rising young trainers, David Loder, reacted with surprise and annoyance yesterday to claims that he had engaged Jason Weaver to be the No. 1 jockey for his Sefton Lodge yard. 'I will continue with a best-available policy, which has served me very well over the last two seasons,' Loder said. 'Furthermore, I will not be expanding my yard and I hopefully will continue to train the same number of horses for the same owners.'
As for Michael Jackson and Toby Balding, both are maintaining a dignified silence over the reasons for the parting of their ways. Jackson did reveal yesterday, however, that Forest Sun is being allowed time to recover from a cannon-bone injury sustained in Ireland last season, while One More Run, a talented though erratic novice chaser last term, has taken up residence with Charlie Brooks in Lambourn. 'He's a big, strong horse and I can imagine all sorts of things for him if he can keep his jumping going,' he said yesterday. 'Maybe nobody else can, but I can, and that's the important thing.'
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