Worth A Shot!

There are five meetings taking place this afternoon with jumps cards from Doncaster, Newbury and Kelso while there are all-weather fixtures from Lingfield and Newcastle.  David has one runner at both Doncaster and Newbury today with Taws contesting the Listed mares' novices' hurdle at Doncaster at 3pm and Shotavodka in the oldies race at Newbury.  Taws finished an excellent second to Finian's Oscar last time and while she has to improve again on that bare form, she should improve for the longer trip and is not without hope under Daryl Jacob.  Meanwhile, stable jockey Tom Scudamore heads to Newbury for the mount aboard old favourite Shotavodka in the veteran's handicap chase.  He is pictured above winning the race last year and is only 1lb higher this time around - true, he is another year older but he retains all of his enthusiasm and ran a good race when third over timber on his penultimate start.  A repeat of that effort would see him go well.  David also has a rare runner on the all-weather as Juste Pour Nous makes his debut for the stable at Lingfield with Dougie Costello in the saddle.

There is some good racing to look forward to at Newbury today as it is Greatwood Day.  The feature race is the Greatwood Gold Cup with the tidy sum of £28,000 up for grabs.  Oldgrangewood looks to be on the upgrade and is my idea of the likeliest winner.

It looks like the metal detector boys were out of luck yesterday.  They went out for two hours and all they got was rain and snow...and a bit of an old plough!  Fortunately for him, Sam Twiston-Davies is a lot better at riding.

You can tell Cheltenham is just around the corner - the place has been awash with the media over the last few days.  Sir Anthony McCoy was down here on Wednesday with the ITV racing team to film some interviews that will be used during the four days of the Cheltenham Festival, while great friend of the Pond House team, Mike Vince was down on Thursday.  Mike did a series of video interviews that we will be featuring on the website during the course of next week, starting with the trainer himself in Monday's blog.  Meanwhile, Racing UK paid us a visit yesterday and did pieces with David and Tom Scu and even asked me about some of Martin old Festival winners...it was hard to decide on the best of then, although Baron Blakeney will always hold a special place for me (even though I took 50's and he returned at 66/1!).

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There looks to be some good footballing action taking place this weekend with Liverpool playing Arsenal at 5.30pm.  It will be interesting to see if Leicester turn it on against Hull like they did against Liverpool after firing Ranieri.  If they do, 7/8 could prove a very good price - I will double them with the Scousers at 23/20...I must be mad, but I don't think Liverpool can play that badly twices.

David Haye and Tony Bellew stop all the talking tonight and get into the ring.  Haye's latest prediction is that he will win within six minutes.  As I have already said, let's hope the action is as good as the talk!

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I'm studying ceramics at the moment - it is driving me potty!  Have a nice weekend...

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