The HorseyHotties.com Bumper at Bangor!!

Well where do I start!! This last week has been pretty bloody fantastic for HorseyHotties.com as I decided to venture into the realms of horse race sponsorship.

Through working for Racing Welfare I was aware of HRH The Princess Royal (President of RW) would be attending our Charity Raceday at Bangor-on-Dee Racecourse on the 10th November. This was the perfect opportunity as Bangor is my home National Hunt track, somewhere I'd enjoyed many a days racing with friends and family. Also knowing that my race sponsorship would directly go to Racing Welfare was all the incentive I needed. So as a sponsoring newbee, the 4:10 was aptly named 'The HorseyHotties.com 'Newcomers' Standard Open National Hunt Flat Race'

I arrived at the racecourse for 8:30am to help with the final set up. Lunch guests arrived at 11am, including 'The Voice of Racing' himself Sir Peter O'Sullevan. A racing figure with whom I grew up listening to on the BBC whist watching the Grand National! It was really wonderful to see some friendly faces amongst the 200 guests, many I hadn't seen in nearly a year since moving to Newmarket.

Now we get on to the fun bit! Being presented to HRH The Princess Royal by Roger Weatherby (Chairman of RW and Chief Executive of Weatherby's Bank) "This is Ginny Rose from HorseyHotties.com".. as I recall there was a wry smile and quite possibly a raised eyebrow from HRH! I then explained how I started HorseyHotties.com and had a jolly nice chat, although to be fair I think it was me that did most of the talking! The funny thing is that during my time Eventing I had often seen Princess Anne, mainly at Gatcombe when I was competing. However for some reason in this oh so public environment I found myself getting a tad bit nervous and said to one of the guys from Coral Bookies, Coral were also sponsoring a race that day.. "God I've got sweaty palms.. how ridiculous is that!" He then pointed out that HRH was wearing gloves, phew!! I bet that's the first bullet point in the book 'The HRH Guide to Meet & Greets'. As a pro, one must always wear gloves, you don't know who's sweaty palm you might be shaking!

The rest of the day was superb, the auction raised around £11,000 for RW and Trainer Richard Phillips was the auctioneer. He has got to be my new favourite trainer after standing up and saying the following "I first met Roger Weatherby on HorseyHotties.com". I'd heard that he is a very funny man and after that he had the room in laugher and all eyes were on the auctioneer! Thank you Richard, that line made my day! Check out his website www.richardphillipsracing.com

The race itself was shown live on Racing UK and was won by Kings Grace trained by Donald McCain. Watch it back by clicking here.

And that was that! Today Bangor-on-Dee tomorrow... Cheltenham?? Now that would be cool.. wouldn't it!!