Single Runner

                      Bad Girls
      with Real Bad Girl Amanda Barrie
                 & Hilary Bonner!

Palace Jester ran his best race since joining the Pond House team yesterday at Wincanton finishing second.  Maybe the softer surface helped our eight year old and on this run he should be able to win a race or two.  Today there are five meetings on and three of them are jumps cards at Fontwell, Uttoxeter and Perth and two flat cards at Doncaster and Bath.  David has just the one runner at Uttoxeter in the concluding Bumper, Bad Girls.  It is her first ever run so everything will be new to our four year old filly.  She was bred by MCP and is from the same family as Royal Auclair so she might need a stiffer test of stamina in time.  Tom Scu rides and she is sure to learn a lot for the experience.  They had over 23mm of rain at Uttoxeter so the going will be pretty testing.  That is 7mm more than we had at Pond House, we had 16mm in the past 24 hours but thankfully it has stopped raining for now!

There is some good racing at York this afternoon, including two Group races.  The exciting filly Mince makes her first start of the season, she ended last season the winner of all four of her starts.  Hopefully she will make a winning start to the new season.  

In the paper I agree with what Middleham Park relation manager Tim Palin said about Mad Moose.  Their horse was second in the Group 3 at Chester last week but he was well beaten.  The handicapper has put the horse up 21 pounds for finishing second and he is now rated 100!  As Tim says, I think the handicapper has overreacted!  This may well put people off running in these type of races again if things like this happen and it is nice to have a few runners in races where the field size is usually quite small.

Arsenal beat Wigan 4-1 last night and FA Cup winners Wigan are now relegated from the Premier league.  I thought the score flattered Arsenal a bit and it is sad to see Wigan go down.  They have some good players though and I am sure they can bounce straight back up.  

How can a football manager let a player smoke in the changing rooms?  We that is apparantly what ex Man City boss Mancini allowed Balotelli to do, unbelieveable!