Chester's Bumper Crowd

What a great turnout for the racing at Chester yesterday with almost 30,000 people in attendance.  To put that into some sort of perspective, the first day of this year's Grand National meeting attracted a record crowd of 35,000 so this was a tremendous effort from Chester.  It just goes to show that if marketed correctly racing can be a terrific draw for the public.  Chester is a fantastic place to watch racing - they go around in circles and there is an excellent bar in the middle of the track where all of the footballers hang out with their wags and fake tans!  Mind you, you need to be a footballer to be able to afford the champagne on offer there.

It is the first day of our summer sabbatical today with no jump racing now for the next week or so...what am I going to do?  There are four meetings taking place with the action all on the flat coming from Ripon, Salisbury, Carlisle and Windsor.

Let's hope that they get the right horses today as one of the fillies' involved in the mix up a couple of weeks ago runs again today.  Millies Kiss contests the 5.45pm race at Windsor tonight - last time she contested the two year old's race, even though she is already three!  There should be no such repeat today as the trainer has only one runner.

So, unsurprisingly Hayley Turner's recent taste of success has led to her coming out of retirement to resume her race riding career.  She has taken the sensible decision to base herself in France where she will be able to take advantage of the 4lbs weight allowance given to the lady jockeys.  She was a Group One winning jockey on these shores, so I am sure she will enjoy a great deal of success in France.

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The Charity Shield ended up as a draw with Arsenal beating Chelsea on penalties.  Arsenal manager Wenger looked so happy you would have thought that he had won the league.  He went on to say that a united Arsenal can lift the Premiership, although that just goes to illustrate to me that he is living in cuckoo land.

New 100 meters world champion Justin Gatlin was booed last night by the London crowd as he received his gold medal.  Jessica Ennis-Hill said that if we had a lifetime ban for drugs cheats the crowd would not have been booing...I totally agree.  Gatlin has twice served bans for positive drugs tests.  Ironically, Ennis-Hill yesterday collected a gold medal for the heptathlon from the 2011 world championships following the disqualification of a Russian drugs cheat.

My series bet on England to win the cricket is looking increasingly good by the day.  How good is Moeen Ali turning out to be?  I would be thinking about moving him up the order in the future.

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Thought for the day...why is it that a woman only believes what a man says when it is a compliment?!

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