Road Runner At Chester

There are seven meetings taking place this afternoon with flat cards from Haydock, Newmarket, Chester, Beverley, Catterick and Chepstow while there is also a lovely jumps card from Stratford.  David has one runner today as Tobacco Road contests the 1m2f flat handicap at Chester at 5.30pm.  He ran a cracker last time out under today's jockey Tom Marquand when narrowly touched off at Chelmsford City and he should go well again from only a 2lbs higher mark.  The big negative is that he is drawn widest of all in stall 12 and even over these intermediate trips, the draw is important at Chester.  Hopefully he will break well and be able to secure a good position - if he does that he would not be without a chance.  Meanwhile, over at Stratford Pond House jockey David Noonan looks to have picked up a nice outside ride so it would be good if he were among the winners.

I had to laugh when I heard the comments of highly experienced French jockey Gerald Mosse after his first visit to Brighton.  He said, "I like Brighton, the track is good, we have some similar tracks in France, but none quite like this".  I cannot believe that there are any other tracks like Brighton - if you go past the winning post too quickly you could fall over the cliffs!

I see that Eddie Harty is 80 today.  I once did A Question Of Sport with Eddie many years ago.  You youngsters will not remember, but Eddie rode Highland Wedding and Killiney among his many winners - a very accomplished jockey.  Many happy returns Eddie...

There was an advert for stable staff at Land's End.  I wondered who on earth would want to set up a stable at the bottom end of England?  It turns out that it was Land's End, Kentucky!

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The big football match of the day is the World Cup Qualifier between England and Scotland at 5.00pm on ITV.  England are 8/11 favourites and surely should win this, or have we regressed that badly?  Sorry Sean!  Meanwhile Germany are 1/1000 to beat San Marino - should they even be holding these matches when they are so one-sided?

Andy Murray was beaten yesterday in five sets in the semi-finals of the French Open tennis at Roland Garros by Stan Wawrinka.  The match took 4 hours and 34 minutes and Murray looked exhausted by the end of it - at lease it should help to bring him to peak fitness.  Over in the ladies it looks as if my wager on Simona Halep may come to fruition...I hope a few of you are also on - she contests the final today against world number 47 Jelena Ostapenko.

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The boss put a 'conserve energy' sign up in the staff room...I guess I had better put my feet up and take a little nap!  Have a nice weekend...

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