Three Runners At Taunton

*Taunton 3.00pm Businessmoney Judi N/R*

There are four meetings taking place this afternoon - three on the flat at Catterick, Yarmouth and Wolverhampton as well as a jumps card at our local track, Taunton.  There is a competitive day's action at the Somerset track and with Businessmoney Judi now a non-participant we have three runners, Terfel's Toscar, Vertige Dore (pictured above) and Dukes Art.  We had a couple of runners at Bangor yesterday - unfortunately Investissement fell three out .  The winner of that race, Tominator was rated 100 on the flat and he looks to be a useful recruit to hurdling.  Meanwhile Molly Oscar ran in snatches but did run on well in the closing stages to finish fourth, not beaten at all far - this former point winner may well benefit from a longer trip.

I attended the Newmarket Sales yesterday with David and Martin and it bought back a lot of happy memories - I have not been there for several years but plenty of the old faces are still about, they just look older.  It was good to see recently retired trainer Barry Hills in attendance and apparently he will be visiting Pond House for a tour sometime in the near future.  Meanwhile, I enjoyed giving William Haggas a bit of stick, mind you he was always very good at giving it back!

I was obviously a good luck charm yesterday!...I watched a race at Naas with Irish trainer Jessica Harrington and her horse won it and I later watched a race with Jonjo at Bangor and his horse won that!  I was looking for another trainer with a runner that I could find so that I could have a bet on it, but there was no-one else to be seen!

Former footballer Micky Quinn was at the sales and I never realised quite how big he was - I bet he was a right handful back in his playing days and I for one would not have wanted to be marking him on the pitch!

I was quite surprised how many people were talking about football referee Mark Clattenburg yesterday - Clattenburg was overseeing the messy match between Manchester United and Chelsea.  Funny enough, northern trainer Dandy Nicholls didn't seem to mind him but that is probably more to do with the fact that he has red eyeballs...Dandy is a complete Manchester United nut!  Personally I think that he is a terrible ref as he keeps getting everything wrong, eh Tony?!