Champers Scores!

Champers On Ice (pictured above) made a very satisfactory debut over fences yesterday when coming home the very easy winner of Uttoxeter's three mile novices' chase.  You couldn't see an awful lot because of the fog, but he jumped proficiently (if a little left at times) under Tom Scudamore and came home 27 lengths clear of his nearest rival and he can clearly go on to much better things.  He rates a very exciting prospect.  Meanwhile, Mister Drifter shaped with promise in the bumper and I think he will improve a great deal for the experience.

There are four meetings taking place this afternoon with jumps cards from Leicester and Hexham as well as all-weather flat cards from Lingfield and Kempton.  David has two runners today as Great Tempo makes the long journey up to Hexham for the juvenile maiden hurdle at 12.15pm and Rathealy contests the selling hurdle at Leicester.  Our three year old Great Tempo had some very decent form in France, including when runner-up at Auteuil last time out.  He handles soft ground well and will take the world of beating although you are not going to get rich backing him as he is a 1/14 chance!  Tom Scudamore is on board.

Meanwhile at Leicester this represents a drop in class for Rathealy as he takes in the selling hurdle although he has a little to find strictly at the weights.  Michael Heard takes 5lbs off his back and if he can reproduce any of his better form he would have a decent chance.

Talking of our 1/14 chance at Hexham today bought back some memories we don't want repeated!  Indeed, Tom's dad Peter was aboard an absolute certainty at Ludlow on 11th May 1989 when he managed to finish only 2nd of 4 runners (beaten 20 lengths) aboard Kabartaylar in a 2m5f novices' hurdle.  Furthermore, A P McCoy went one better when managing to get beaten aboard Tamarinbleu on 2nd February 2004 in a NH novices' hurdle at Exeter when 3rd of 7 finishers at odds of 1/10!  It just goes to show, there is no such thing as a certainty in horse racing - let's hope that Tom can get it right today aboard Great Tempo.

I know part of the upside to Matt Chapman is that he courts a bit of controversy but he is still goingto have to watch what he says.  Only yesterday he risked upsetting trainer Dan Skelton by having a pop at his weight by saying it looked like he had eaten all the pies.  Fortunately for the orange one, co-host Luke Harvey quickly bailed him out of trouble.

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I see that former world number one tennis player Novak Djockovic has split with his coach Borris Becker.  The Serb won six Grand Slams with Becker as his coach - I suppose if you drop to number 2 in the world it is time for the coach to go!

There was a good result for Arsenal in Europe last night as they beat Basel 4-1 away.  They win their group and therefore avoid Barcelona in the last 16 - win, win!  Meanwhile, Celtic had their best result in years as they drew with Manchester City - I bet my mate Sean was well pleased!

The Bellew versus Haye fight is really hotting up and the bout isn't until 4th March 2017!  I know the build-up's are normally all hype but I get the feeling these two really don't like each other very much!  Why don't they make the purse 'winner takes all' to really spice things up a bit?!  I wonder which one would bottle out of that?

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Thought for the day...do cross-eyed teachers have trouble controlling their pupils?

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