Ladies' Night!

Well, the week long jumps sabatical starts today so if you like your National Hunt racing you might as well take a week's holiday!  Nevertheless, the work around the yard continues as normal (as you can see from the above picture on the gallops) so that the horses are ready to go upon resumption.  There are four flat meetings to keep us occupied today at Ripon, Wolverhampton, Carlisle and Windsor...the meeting at Carlisle is an all lady jockey's card.  Quite a few of the ladies are from the jumping game, including Rachael Green and Lucy Alexander, while top flat jockey's Kirsty Milczarek and Cathy Gannon have a decent book of rides.  I would have thought that four of those ladies will have a few winners between them...you heard it here first!

Well, the week long jumps sabatical starts today so if you like your National Hunt racing you might as well take a week's holiday!  Nevertheless, the work around the yard continues as normal (as you can see from the above picture on the gallops) so that the horses are ready to go upon resumption.  There are four flat meetings to keep us occupied today at Ripon, Wolverhampton, Carlisle and Windsor...the meeting at Carlisle is an all lady jockey's card.  Quite a few of the ladies are from the jumping game, including Rachael Green and Lucy Alexander, while top flat jockey's Kirsty Milczarek and Cathy Gannon have a decent book of rides.  I would have thought that four of those ladies will have a few winners between them...you heard it here first!

It is no great secret that a low draw is extremely advantageous at Chester and yesterday's results illustrated that perfectly.  Four of the winners on the card came from stalls one or two - it is a very straight forward system, but definitely one to remember.

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I see that Tony Martin's Busted Tycoon won for a record third time in the space of a week at the Galway Festival yesterday.  The bookmakers must hate it when one of his horses is backed into favouritism as it is not very often they leave their money in the bookies satchels.

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I don't like to gloat...actually that's a lie - any opportunity!  If you had been reading my column over the last week hopefully you will have had a few quid on Richard Hughes to be champion jockey at the Glorious Goodwood meeting and England to land the draw in the third Ashes Test.  Well, the first leg is in the bag while the cricket looks all set to end in stalemate at odds of 5/2.  The England players managed to get the umpires to stop play due to bad light - I love betting on this type of sporting event as you don't need a form book, just the five day weather forecast!

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On the football front I can't say that I'm suprised that there have still been no big name signings from Arsenal despite losing 2-1 to Galatasaray.  I am sure that manager Arsene Wenger thinks that he is spending his own money!  He will probably panic on the last day of the transfer window and buy some relatively moderate players.

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Whatever will the next advance in science be?  Apparently scientists are now growing beef burgers from stem cells...mind you they cost £250,000 and they are not even sure if they taste like beef!  I wonder if they would be able to grow me a decent golf swing?!