Sacré bleu!

I am thoroughly enjoying my trip to France and just as predicted, there is some big money being thrown around at the Arqana sales.  The lots are averaging over €100,000, with the top lot - a yearling fetching €1.7million...handsome is as handsome does, and to me that seems like an awful lot of money to throw at a completely untried youngster.  I have seen plenty of familiar faces from the flat, all looking to strengthen their teams and uncover a star of tomorrow - Mark Johnston, Ed Dunlop and Paul Cole are all in attendance to name but a few.

*****

There is an interesting piece in the Racing Post today as they celebrate Hayley Turner's second Group One success of the season with a large feature on lady jockey's in racing.  They seem to have missed a trick however, as the greatest lady jockey of the lot, Julie Krone (winner of over 3,700 races) barely rates a mention.  Katie Walsh makes a valid point when she says that lady jockeys are generally physically outmatched by their male counterparts - much as I would love to see a lady jockey challenging for major honours over jumps, as long as there is the likes of A P McCoy (who let's face it is more like Popeye with muscles on his muscles, while maintaining a sensible riding weight) I can't see it happening.

*****

I see that the George Baker plan finally came to fruition at Leicester yesterday afternoon.  For the first time, the four year old gelding George Baker won under the jockey of the same name - he is also trained by George Baker and part-owned by George Baker!  Four George Baker's in the winner's enclosure, I don't suppose that has ever happened before!

*****

I have often banged on about how we can encourage young people to the races.  Well, the obvious thing to do would be to ask the youngsters themselves and the Racing Post have finally done as much.  Today they speak with Mike Spence, a 20 year old University Student - he says that the best way to encourage them to the races is to offer free entry to students.  He is definitely right - we all know how broke these students are, but one day a great many of them will be successful business people and that is certainlyl the right target audience.  Personally, I would take things a step further and offer free admittance to students and anyone else under the age of 18.