Off the Mark

     High Ville - 1st Winner of the Season 

There were lots of non runners at Exeter last night, including Prime Location and Problema Tic as the ground was pretty quick but it was great for David to get his first winner of the season courtesy of High Ville.  Our gelding appreciated the quicker ground and settled a bit better than he had been of late under a nice front running ride by Conor O'Farrell.  Now he has got his head in front we hope he will be able to again while the ground stays a bit better.  Barney Cool finished fourth at Worcester and looked a little bit one paced. He may need a longer trip like his the rest of his family appear to have needed.

Today there are five race meetings on.  On the flat we have Ascot, Pontefract and Kempton and we have two jumps cards at Southwell and Cheltenham.  It is an all hunter chase evening at Cheltenham this evening and there looks some very competitive races.  If you can get to the track it is well worth going for a nice evening of racing where the amateur's get to shine.

Richard Hughes rode a treble at Lingfield yesterday and he already has 35 winners on the board this season.  That is already seven in front of Ryan Moore and I think it will be hard for anyone to beat Hughsie in the title race this season.  Richard Hannon has a big team of two year olds to go to war with.

Tony Dobbin is 41 today.  It says in the paper that he was the rider of One Man and Lord Gyllene.  What about War Singer who he rode to win the charity race at Aintree last month!  I don't think he could have had a bigger smile on his face - happy birthday Tony!.

It is a shame trainer Keiran Burke has fallen out with Hunt Ball's owner Anthony Knott.  It is always a shame when owners and trainers fall out, mind you Mr Knott does seem a larger than life character!  Hunt Ball goes to the sales at Cheltenham this month and I would think there will be a lot of interest in the horse who has run well this season in some top races.

I watched the Real Madrid versus Dortmund match last night where Madrid won 2-0 but this was not good enough to reach the final of the Champions League.  Real should have scored 3 in the first 10 minutes.  They missed some great chances but it was a great entertaining game.  It looks like Real Madrid's manager Jose Mourino will be going back to Chelsea which is good news for Frank Lampard, Jose loves Frank!  So do Chelsea!

43.3% os statistics are meaningless!