Mints Second At Abbot

There are four meetings taking place this afternoon with all of the action coming on the level from Ayr, Ripon, Windsor and Wolverhampton so you are out of luck if you are a fan of the jumps.  I thought that our runner over the weekend, Ilovemints ran a good race to finish runner-up at Newton Abbot on Saturday.  I thought she was going to win jumping the second last but was beaten four lengths, trying to concede over a stone to the eventual winner so this was a pretty decent effort.  She certainly seemed to appreciate the longer trip and can win something similar before too long.

I see that Southwell selling hurdle winner Robin des Mana was sold for £18,000 at the subsequent auction to Philip York.  The successful bidder now plans to run him in a charity race at Goodwood before sending him point-to-pointing.

I was just getting used to the new team on ITV's racing coverage and now they are going to lose the rights to Attheraces which will now become SkySports Racing when the new contract kicks in next March.  It doesn't sound like Matt Chapman will be in their plans so it is not all bad news!  I am only joking, Matt will be wiping the floor with me if I don't add that.  In fairness to the orange one, he may not be to everybody's taste but he does create controversy and debate and if you can get people talking about racing that has to be a good thing.

*****

There was a good World Cup final yesterday with France prevailing 4-2 over Croatia.  If England are to get any better they need a couple of world class midfielders like Hazard or Modric as well as a world class striker who can convert the chances presented to him.  I would start by changing the rules at club level so that any domestic league side can only have three or four overseas players (like the cricket).  At present there are a lot of good youngsters about who don't even get the experience of playing Premier League football and this would be a good way of addressing that.

I couldn't have got it more wrong with Wimbledon.  I said repeatedly that I didn't give Novak Djokovic any chance of winning the title but he won in straight sets and looked different class to Kevin Anderson.  Perhaps I should stick to racing?!

Golfer Brandon Stone needed an eight foot putt at the Scottish Open.  If it had gone in it would have been the first round of 59 on the European Tour.  Mind you, he picked up £880,000 for winning and booked his place in the Open so I don't suppose he will lose too much sleep dwelling on it.

*****

Cupid almost got me yesterday...I have an arrow escape!  Keep smiling...

Tweet