Runners At Fontwell Today

There are four meetings taking place this afternoon at Fontwell and Catterick over the sticks, and Lingfield and Kempton on the all-weather.  Weekend Millionair (pictured above) and Hidden Discounts are the two runners from the yard at Fontwell and will Tom Scudamore takes the mount aboard both.  Watching the racing from Exeter yesterday I was interested to see the ground was officially good (good/soft in places), but if you looked through the times there didn't appear to be much in the way of good ground.  Most races were in the region of 30 seconds outside of the standard time, while the Devon National was over 45 seconds slow!

Grands Crus worked with stable companion Zaynar after racing at Exeter yesterday.  Tom Scudamore was aboard Grands Crus while Tom Bellamy partnered Zaynar - both horses did a nice piece of work and that will have put them spot-on.

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You have to feel sorry for poor old Nigel Twiston-Davies.  Every trainers' worst nightmare occurred yesterday when no fewer than three of his Cheltenham Festival team were ruled out including former Gold Cup winner Imperial Commander...he had been the subject of much publicity lately and I was looking forward to seeing him in action once again.

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I also feel for Manchester United having lost 2-1 at home to Real Madrid and the referee after leading 1-0.  The Turkish ref was not up to such a high profile football match - he sent off Nani for a high challenge which changed the complexion of the entire match.  I wouldn't have liked to be anywhere near Sir Alex Ferguson last night!  In fairness to Jose Mourinho he said that the best team lost...could 'The Special One' be after the United job when Sir Alex becomes a director?!