Scu Aboard The Package

I feel very sorry for Timmy Murphy who suffered a back injury when falling in the last race at Newbury yesterday afternoon aboard the Jo Davis trained Leeroar - we wish him a speedy recovery although he is likely to spend 4-6 weeks on the sidelines.  Tom Scudamore re-routes from Newcastle to ride our three runners at Newbury Star Of Angels, The Package and Consigliere, while Conor O'Farrell takes the ride aboard Junior in the Rehearsal Chase where the good news is that they have passed an early morning inspection.

Obviously The Hennessy is the big race of the day and The Package comes here in cracking form having produced a good effort to land the Badger Ales Chase at Wincanton last time and we will be hoping that he can emulate David's success of 2009 when Madison du Berlais landed the prestigious chase.  On the same card it looks as though Big Buck's will have nothing more than an exercise gallop to land some more big bucks!  As well as cracking jumps meetings at Newbury and Newcastle, there is also action taking place at Towcester and an all-weather flat meeting at Wolverhampton.

Talking of Newcastle, below I have a short video of Junior (left) on the gallops completing his final piece of work ahead of this afternoon's Rehearsal Chase.  The ground is going to be very testing up at the Northern track and he has plenty of weight but he is tough and stays well.

There was another great performance yesterday afternoon from Dynaste who jumped like a seasoned pro on only his second start over fences to land the Grade Two novices' chase, picking up just shy of £14,000 in the process.  He looks to be a reallly exciting prospect and for me The Festival can't come soon enough!  There's a great picture of our grey jumping Newbury's water in the Racing Post today - the photographer probably had wet feet to take that shot!

Should racecourses leave it so long before deciding whether or not a meeting goes ahead?  Musselburgh was called off at 1pm yesterday afternoon after several inspections during the course of the morning.  They had suffered frost overnight and it hadn't come out of the ground as quickly as they would have hoped.  Half an hour later they could have raced, but a line needs to be drawn somewhere.  Poor old Dougie Costello drove six hours up to the Scottish track only for the meeting to be abandoned - he said "does anyone have a loan for diesel?"!  While I appreciate that the courses have to do their best to get the meetings to go ahead, I think they would make their decisions sooner if they had to pay everyone's expenses!

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I see that Andrew Flintoff picked himself up off the canvas to land his first fight on points.  He has a black eye for his trouble and I bet he feels a bit sore this morning.  Think about it Freddie - can't you just bat for England?

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It's officially the start of the skiing season in Scotland today - I can just see our owners Sean and Jo Tracey kitted out for a day on the slopes.