post 5: Secretariat - Famous racehorses

Secretariat

Secretariat was born on March 30, 1970 at The Meadow Stud in Doswell, Virginia. His owner was Penny Chenery and his trainer was Lucien Laurin. He was to become probably the greatest racehorse of the twentieth century.
His first race was a 5 and a half furlong race on July 4, 1972 and he finished in fourth place.

11 days after Secretariat's first race, he ran again, this time winning by 4 lengths.
his seventh race that he ran was the 1 mile long Champagne Stakes. He ran in last place in the 12 horse field, until the ½ mile mark, where he dug in, and started passing horses. While doing so, he unintentionally bumped into another horse, Stop The Music, but then went on to win the race by two lengths. After the race, the stewards at the track decided that the bump was hard enough to keep Stop The Music from winning, so they moved Secretariat to second place, having Stop The Music win the race.
he then went on to win many other races.
he won the kentucky derby in 1973, breaking the record for the fastest 1 1/2 mile run with 1:59 minutes. this record is stil unbeaten today.
As a stallion, Secretariat sired over 600 foals, though none was as great as he was. On October 4, 1989, when Secretariat was 19 years old, he was put down due to laminitis. Before he was buried, he was autopsied by Dr. Thomas Swerczek. Dr. Swerczek found that Secretariat's heart was extremely large at 21 pounds, where as a normal Thoroughbred heart is 9 pounds.ecretariat was then buried whole on Claiborne Farms, next to his sire, Bold Ruler. Only certain, special horses get buried whole and Secretariat was definitely one of them.

Post 4 : Arkle - Famous Racehorses

Arkle.

Arkle was one of the most famous racehorses in irish history.
he came from a family of winning racehorses.
His first victory at Cheltenham was in the Broadway Chase and it gave the first sight of what was to come as he won by a breathtaking twenty lengths. he then went on to win the Cheltnam gold cup three times, the kind georges VI chase, 4 other gold cup races, the grand national and many more important races.
He won the 1965 gallagher gold cup and broke the previous record by 17 seconds!
In December 1966 Arkle raced in the King George VI Chase at Kempton Park but struck the guard rail with a hoof when jumping the open ditch, he got a fractured pedal bone, despite this he completed the race and finished second. He was in plaster for 4 months and though he made a good enough recovery to go back into training he never ran again. He was retired and ridden as a hack by his owner and then succumbed to what has been variously described as advanced arthritis, or possibly brucellosis, and was put down at the early age of 13.

Arkle became a national legend in Ireland. His strength was jokingly claimed to come from drinking Guinness twice a day. At one point the slogan Arkle for President was written on a wall in Dublin.

post 3 : Corrida - famous racehorses

Corrida

Corrida was a French Thoroughbred racehorse born in 1932, who won races in France, Belgium and England and is regarded as one of the top fillies of the 20th Century worldwide.
Corrida won many many races in her lifetime and became the first female horse to ever win the 1½ mile Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe in Paris, twice.
Corrida in latin languages translates as bullfight, a name that well described this determined filly. At age two, she won the Prix Morny and was second by a head to 'Panpeiro' in the Grand Critérium. At age three, her owner shipped Corrida to England where she was prepared at Newmarket Racecourse. Entered in the1,000 Guineas and the Epsom Oaks, Corrida performed poorly, and after a third failing effort was returned to France. There, Corrida began to respond. She won the Grand Prix de Marsseille at Hippodrome de Marseille Borely and had three good placings in major races including a third place in the 1935 Prix de l'arc de Triomphe.

She was retired after a long career in racing in a stud in normandy. Following the D-Day landing at Normandy, Corrida disappeared from the pasture at the stud during the Battle of the Falaise Gap. No trace of her was ever found.

Post 2 : Franfreluche..Famous Racehorses.

Franfreluche was a Canadian-bred Champion Thoroughbred racehorse.
she was owned and bred by J. Louis Lévesque and trained by Yonnie Starr.

When she was 2 she raced in Canada, at age three Fanfreluche's performances in both Canada and the United States earned her the Eclipse Award for Outstanding 3-Year-Old Filly and the Sovereign Award for Canadian Horse of the Year. After winning many other races and earning over $238,688 in winnings she was sold as a broodmare(mare used to breed foals only)to American horseman Bertram R. Firestone for a then world-record price of $1.3 million. Bred to the famous stallion stallion Buckpasser, in 1972 she produced the two-time Canadian Horse of the Year L'Enjoleur.
While carrying one of her foals while staying in claiborn farm, Kentucky in 1977, she was abducted.
In December. five months after her disappearance, the FBI found her 158 miles south near the small town of Tompkinsville. Fanfreluche was being kept by a family who said they had found her wandering along the country road.She was Returned safely to Claiborne Farm, in the spring of 1978. this abduction happened only a few years before shergars.

The Old Man and the Sea - Book Review.

This is a book written by Ernest Hemingway and was first published in 1952 in England. the book tells the story of a Cuban Fisherman who is devoted to fishing and has spent all his life out in the sea.
In the story the man had been going through a spell of 84 bad days fishing. until one day he goes out in his boat and hooks the biggest marlon he had ever seen. the fish tows him many miles out to sea, further than the man has gone before while fishing. he endures a 3 day battle with the large fish, during those days he reflects on his life and questions his ability to catch the fish.
i was surprised at the beginning of the book as i had read the blurb before starting and i had been wondering how could ernest hemingway have made a whole book out of this storyline? but after reading the first 2 pages i was caught in the story and couldnt put the book down 'til i was finished.
the story is written from a 'fly on the wall' point of view, and basically follows the man on his journey watching how he cares for himself and how he steadys his mind while at sea and while dealing with the battle with the fish. throughout thte story the reader becomes very close to the man in a way. we can almost predict his actions and feel for him as we share his emotional stress. he is a very lonely man, his wife had died a few years earlier and his only real friend is a young boy who used to go out fishing with him. the boy was no longer alowwed go with the old man though as the boys father saw the man as unlucky as he hadnt caught a fish in over 80 days.
so during his battle he wishes on numerous occasions that the boy had come with him on this trip to help him with the big catch.
after reading this book i would definatly reccomend it to anybody looking for a book to read. the story is great for someone looking for an easy read but delivers the same amount of enjoyment as a much longer novel. i will definately be reading this book again or other books from this author again.

Post 1 Geography of Famous Racehorses :)

Shergar!

For my first point on my map i traveled to the birthplace of the famous irish racehorse, Shergar. this meant going to the Gilltown stud in killcullen.
Shergar was a Stallion owned and bred by Prince Karim Aga Khan IV in 1978.

Shergar's first race as a racehorse at the 1981 Guardian Classic Trial, which he won by 10 lengths. He would follow this up with another great win when he won well at the Chester Vase race by 12 lengths.
Although he only raced eight times, Shergar won six of those races and left an major mark on the racing world, which he dominated in 1981. Aside from the Epsom Derby, Shergar also won two other premiere events that year: Irish Derby Stakes and the King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes. For his first year, Shergar was honored as Europe's Horse of the Year in 1981.

With those wins, Shergar headed to the Epsom as the favorite to win. The odds makers proved to be right as Shergar grabbed the lead early and never looked back in winning the Epsom Derby. In his next race, the Irish Derby Stakes, Shergar won the race so easily that one commentator noted that Shergar was merely in an exercise canter. Shergar was hailed as an Irish national hero after that.

As a businessman, his owner Aga Khan offered 34 shares in Shergar for sale at £250,000 each and kept six shares for himself. Shergar's valuation soared to £10 million, a record at that time.

Unfortunately, Shergar's great value may have led to his kidnapping in 1983 from ballymany stud near Curragh in Ireland. He had only spent one season at stud before the kidnapping had happened. most people believe thatit was the IRA who were behind the kidnapping. A ransom demand of £2 million was made later. But when negotiations fell through, the kidnappers cut off all communication and Shergar was never seen again.

sylvia plath in english :)

in english for the past couiple of classes we have been watchin the film all about sylvia. Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Massachusetts, she studied at smith college and newnham college, Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer. She married fellow poet Ted Hughes in 1956 and they lived together first in the United States and then England, having two children together. After a long struggle with depression and a marital separation, Plath committed suicide in 1963. the film we are watching is basically a reenactment of her life and we are watching it in order to understand her poems more for our studies that we will be doing in 5th year. she wrote some poems such as: http://www.angelfire.com/tn/plath/dday.html.. this is a poem called doomsday. her poems were mostly quite depressing. i really like doing the study on sylvia plath :) its really interesting :)

jaba jaba jembayy :)

last week a man called scott came into our class to teach us about playin drums :) he brought in a drum for everybody. there were jembay drums and bongos and loads of other types that i never knew existed.. he taught us how to play them in rythm. at one stage our whole class were drumming the samba and other tunes it was reeally fun!! :) he showed us a video which showed us that there is rythm in everything we do and we realised that this is actually true and if you stop and listen to things you can hear rythms everywhere.. :) i really enjoyed the dayy :)

A day in town :)

on thursday 24th march our ty group travelled into the city centre for an english experince. we left school at 9 and got a bus into the national history museum where we learned loads about the bronze age and olod irish times :) then we moved into there special exhibit all about the bog bodies that were found in bogs around ireland. the bog bodies were the best part of this museum as they were so wel conserved they looked like they were only recently killed :L next we went into the national library to see the w. b. yeats exhibition. this was kind of boring but it was stil interesting to see how much was known about his life and family. after that it was LUNCH :D me, katie, laura, fiona, jessica and rachel ran across town to make sure we had enough time to eat at the place we wanted haha we went to a chinese buffet placeon the quays. we payed 9 euro in then we could eat all we wanted :D:D haha this was great :) we al had about 4 courses of georgeus chinese food :P YUMMM!!! it was sooo nice and desert and everythihng was included :) this was the best part of the day in my opinion haha. after lunch we ran throuhg town back to our class and then we all went to the art museum to lok at the other yeats exhibition of art. some of these paintings were really good i really enjoyed this museumm :) unfortunatly then it was time to go home :( haha back to school but overall it was a really good day and everybody had great fun :D wel definatly take another trip to the museums some day after school :)

Second work experience :D

For our second work experience placement i went to Anglesey lodge equine hospital in the Curragh :) I wanted to go there because i love working with horses and i am interested in becoming a vet also.
my friend Laura also went to the same placement as me in the same week :)
I was really nervous on the first day as i honestly didn't know what to expect but i was excited too :)
Me and Laura traveled to the Curragh by car-sharing everyday...my dad would collect her on the way every morning and Laura's mam would pick us up and bring us home.
We had to be there at 8 every morning and went home at around 5 although most days we didn't go home until about half 5 as we might have been helping with a procedure or something.
When we came in each morning we had to leave our bags in the lunch room then head off and start to replace the bins in surgery and the scanning room.
the we had to groom the horses in the stables. then throughout the rest of the placement we helped the vets out with surgery's and in distributing medicine to the horses. Overall i really enjoyed my work experience week. i could see what it was like to be a vet and i could really see myself doing it :)

my favourite part of the week was when there was a little baby foal who was just born and it was too weak to look after itself and couldn't stand for long or anything, we were sitting by his head as he was lying on the floor and he began nuzzling at our fingers and then tried to suckle on the it was soooooo cuuute!!!! we could see his little tongue and could feel him sucking it was the cutest thing :) this obviously meant he was hungry so then we had to hold the mare while the vets lifted him up to suckle :) this was the highlight of my week and i reeealllllly enjoyed it :)

Mini Company :)

Yesterday we went to a mini company competition in clane GAA. we arrived at around half 9 and had to hurry to set up our individual stands because the judgingg started at 10. we set up our stand really fast and presented our table just before the judging started. there was around 30 or 40 other stands so we were up against some hard competition. only a few people came to look at our stand but the few who did seemed to be very interested in our design and product. the judge finnally came around to us near the end of the compititon and asked us some questions about or company. she asked questions like did we work wel as a team and like what were our original ideas for a company. i think we all handled our judgeing very wel :).... at the end the judges called out the groups who had been shortlisted...anndddddd we did!! :D we were really happy :) but unfortunatly we didnt make it through to the next round :( theres gonna be another competition soon so hopefully we will win something in that one ...Fingers Crossed :) x

Waris Dirie - Desert Flower __ Book Review :)

i really enjoyed reading this story of Waris' life. i think that the life and hardships of the somalian girls is a very important and touching matter. this story really makes me realise how lucky we are that we get education and that we havent got any customs simular to the ones of the somalian people.

the topic in the story of circumsittion really shocked me as i didnt think there were any traditions such as this in the present day.
this just shows us how much the developed world knows about the developing and underdeveloped world!
another thing that interested me was the relationship between waris and her mother. it seems that waris' mother knew how hard waris' life must have been and how hard the customs must have been for a young girl of her age. she obviously underwent the same traumatic experience when she was a young girl too so it makes me wonder hey she doesnt help her daughter more.

while reading the story i found myself hoping that waris would become more successful with her life and i am glad this did in fact happen :)
i would really like to learn more about waris' life and the lives and traditionms of other omalian girls who find themselves in the same unfortunate situation.

Overall i loved the film :)

talk soon, x

Dramma!!

Over our transition year course, in english class we have been working on dramas in our groups. each group has about 15 people in it.
our groups drama was called Time Of Your Life, it was about the troubles young people have today with drink drugs anddomestic violence. we were entered in the bryery gap drama competition and traveled to mulingar to perform in the first heats.
i think our performance was the best we have done so far so everybody was very pleased :) and the adjudicator had no negativ e comments for our drama unlike the others we watched :)
only a few of the drama groups that performed in the day wil be chosen to go through to the next round and maybe the finals..:D we should find outt later this week so fingers crossed!!!