T-rhona elliot

                                                                                                      Diamond Mick was lent to the Borders MS Racing Club
                                                                                                      by breeder and trainer Andrew Hollis, which enabled
                                                                                                       Rhona to start the Borders MS Racing Club. Mick is a
                                                                                                       5 year old Chestnut gelding and he first ran in
                                                                                                       september 2002. He had 15 races before becoming our
                                                                                                       first MS racehorse and amazingly first time out with the
                                                                                                       MS colours, on 5th December 2004, he had his first win!

                                                                                    “One of my goals is to have an MS nurse in the Borders.
                                                                                      I've always been determined and felt enough wasn't being
                                                                                       done in our area. I wanted to do something positive,
                                                                                       something fun which other people could be involved with.
                                                                                                         That's when my idea began to form."
                                                                                                                                               Rhona Elliot

                                                                                                    Seventeen years ago she herself was diagnosed with MS and
                                                                                                      has battled against it ever since.

                                                                                                    Over that time the MS slowly worked away at her and —
                                                                                                    although, amazingly, she hid it from everyone but her
                                                                                                     husband Peter for 12 years — it eventually took away her
                                                                                                    ability to ride in races and restricted her walking. What it
                                                                                                      couldn’t take was her spirit.

                                                                                                   Rhona wrote to around 50 local people and businesses
                                                                                                    explaining her venture and asking them to form the Borders
                                                                                                    MS Racing Club. She managed to persuade friend and breeder
                                                                                                    Andrew Hollis to lease them a horse for a year. Against all
                                                                                                     the odds, her plan came to fruition.

Rhona’s husband Peter, himself a steward at the Borders racecourse, reckons he has never heard any horse get a bigger
reception at Kelso than Mick did when he returned to the winner’s enclosure that day. However that wasn’t the end of
Rhona’s fairytale, it was just the end of the beginning. The MS syndicate has gone from strength to strength, on and off
Course, and soon Diamond Mick was joined bye another horse. However, the nature of racing has meant that it has not
all gone as they would have wished. Last April, Where’s The Nurse took a heavy fall in a race at Kelso and had to be put
down. It was a huge blow to everyone involved.

The Scarvagh House Stud in Northern Ireland — where the branch members went on the weekend trip last summer — kindly
offered a replacement mare for the stricken Where’s The Nurse and so five-year-old Scarvagh Diamond joined the team.
She made her first ever racecourse appearance at Newcastle last month and incredibly she too won first time out in the MS
colours. That win qualified her for a final at Sandown in March and so the Borders MS Racing Club will now venture into the
racing heartlands of the south of England. It is even more than Rhona dared dream of when she conceived of the project.

Trish is the new addition to the Borders MS Racing Club. Like Zara she comes from
the Scarvagh Stud in Northern Ireland and we are extremely grateful to them for
Letting us have this beautiful horse for the charity syndicate.
Trish is based at Harriet Grahams near Jedburgh and has just been backed and ridden
away and is learning so much as a new racehorse. It will be a while before she sees the
track as there is so much for her to learn but hopefully sometime in the spring 2007
she may have a race in a bumper.