Competitive Racing

       Massannie goes for four timer

David has four runners at Market Rasen this afternoon on their feature summer card.  Massannie is looking to maintain her unbeaten record since joining Pond House in her first handicap hurdle.  Street Entertainer and War Singer contest the competitive feature hurdle race.  War Singer is relatively unexposed over obastacles and is open to improvement while Street Entertainer was running a big race in the Swinton hurdle when an error cost him any chance.  Both have each way chances in a tough race.  Problema Tic runs in the big valuable chase.  He was the good winner of the Perth Gold Cup on his penultimate start but was disappointing at Uttoxeter last time so does have to bounce back to form.  Decoy is our only other runner of the day at the Cartmel.  He has been slightly disappointing of late and Kieron Edgar goes up to ride.  There is also some good prize money on offer for this race so there is some great action to watch both over jumps and on the flat today.  There are five flat meetings at Newbury, Newmarket, Ripon, Haydock and Lingfield.

We all went up to David Johnson's memorial service in London yesterday.  There was over 300 people there including, AP, JP McManus, Paul Nicholls, Mick Fitzgerald, Matt Chapman and a lot of people from the world of racing.  MCP gave a great talk about DJ and Terry Beresford, a school boy mate of his told all about David's early life in the East end of London.  I will miss my talks with DJ about how the Hammers were going to win the premier league! It was a lovely service, extremely emotional and I will have to stop now or I will break down again.

As I said yesterday, if we cannot bat on the pitch then the aussies will find it harder.  So we bowled them out for 128.  I know we are 31 for 3 but we don't need too many more wins, this is a bad Australian team.

In the Open golf one of my sons mates is playing, Jimmy Mullen.  he is from the Royal North Devon golf club and has a chance of winning a gold medal for best amateur, he is only 19 and I will be cheering him on today.  Good luck JImmy.