Last week I wrote about how cold and muddy it was at the Cheshire point-to-point races. This weekend it was just the opposite at the Brandywine Hills races at the Brandywine Valley Association on Route 842 in Pocopson Township: it was sunny, warm and just plain beautiful.
Starting off the day were two pony races and a lead-line race, in which a little girl or boy was in the saddle while Mom or Dad trotted along, leading the pony. It's superfluous to say they were extremely cute; we saw one little boy still wearing his helmet the rest of the day.
Then the day's grown-up races started in earnest. We wandered all over the place socializing and taking advantage of Radnor Hunt's refreshments, but we managed to be at the right place to see a couple of really exciting moments.
In one race a jockey almost came off at the last fence but kept clinging on for a number of strides before he finally tumbled off. Photographer Jim Graham was on the spot and shot a very scary sequence of the jockey underneath the horse's hooves; it's hard to believe he got up and seemed OK (I'm told the horse was fine too).
The second exciting moment we saw was the next-to-last race, where we were at the finish line and saw Almarmooq win by three-tenths of a second -- literally a nose.
After that race the course ambulance apparently thought the day was over and headed out the driveway. The course announcer called out, "Stop the ambulance!" and one of the outriders -- literally an ambulance chaser -- galloped after it and caught it before it departed.
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