Investissement At Ascot

  
It's another bumper day of flat racing with five meetings taking place on the level.  The feature once again is day two of Newmarket's July Cup fixture, but there is plenty of other exciting action too with meetings from Ascot, York, Chester and Chepstow.  The stable has one runner on the flat at Ascot, Investissement (pictured above) who goes in the 3.05pm race.  Our seven year old finished third in the 2011 Ebor and is now 8lbs lower in the weights, while jockey William Twiston-Davies claims a useful 5lbs off his back, effectively making him 13lbs lower than when finishing placed in that prestigious handicap...it sounds better every time I say it!  Having said all of that, it is a fiercely competitive race and will take plenty of winning.  The two stars on show today are both Royal Ascot winning fillies' - Sky Lantern and Rizeena both run at Newmarket this afternoon.

The saying goes that you should follow a jockey that has gone to a race meeting for only one ride as it must be well fancied.  Well, P J McDonald and Robert Winston both had one ride at Doncaster yesterday afternoon and they both won...maybe their agents just couldn't get them anymore rides?!  I wonder who made that saying up anyway?

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Even with all of the technology available to them, the umpires in the cricket are still managing to get it spectacularly wrong!  Australian number eleven batsman Ashton Agar scored a world record 98 runs (for a player at his position in the order), yet video footage shows that he was stumped when he was only on 6!  Meanwhile Jonathan Trott was given out LBW when he clearly caught the edge of the bat.  I am not bitter, it would just be nice if the umpires could do the job that they are paid for properly...maybe the governing body should do the same as they do to the judges that call race results incorrectly...give them the old pacamac!

Alistair Cook and Kevin Pietersen battled well to steady the ship last night, let's just hope that they can both build on their solid starts and turn them into sizeable innings.

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I see that Wayne Rooney had a nice 12,000 mile trip in just 38 hours as he visited Bangkok.  He picked up a niggling injury and had to come home.  All does not sound well with the Manchester United camp to me..