Oh Brother!

There was a great late present for William Frewen who celebrated his birthday on Wednesday when My Brother Sylvest was successful in the feature chase at Ffos Las yesterday.  William is the founder of the Teddington Racing Club who own the seven year old.  My Brother Sylvest (pictured above in the bright sunshine) made all the running and jumped really well in the straight when under pressure from his rivals and kept on determinedly under a positive ride from Tom Scudamore to beat Wester Ross by two lengths.  It was a good prize to win, with over £14,000 to the victor, so well done to Ffos Las racecourse for putting up such good money.

There are six meetings taking place this afternoon with five of them on the flat at York, Newmarket, Hamilton, Goodwood, Newcastle as well as a mixed card back at Ffos Las.  The stable does not have any runners today.  The race I am most looking forward to has to be the 2.30pm at York, the Group 2 Lonsdale Cup over two miles.  The interesting one is the Irish trained Simenon who was a dual winner at Royal Ascot last year when winning the Ascot Stakes and Queen Alexandra, while he was just beaten in the Ascot Gold Cup last time out.  A similar level of form ought to be good enough here I believe.

I can't believe that they are still going on about Martin Dwyer's ban in today's Racing Post.  If you go and ride in places like that, you can expect the local stewards to be something of a law unto themselves.  Don't expect them to take any notice of the veterinary report that shows the horse broke a blood vessel.  As far as I can see, the answer is don't go and ride in places like India.

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Just think, a few years ago you would never have thought that Wolves would be playing Crawley in League One.  I see that Wolves are priced up as 3/4 shots - that could be of some interest...Wolves really have slipped that far down the list!

Some of these foreign football teams certainly seem to be a bit shaky.  Spurs won 5-0 away from home, while Swansea were victorious 5-1.  Both of their opponents looked to be about the standard of Torquay (and I am a fan)!

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Rain could just save England in the final Ashes Test against Australia.  England badly need the elements to help them in order to stop the Aussies from winning a match this series.  The home side have gambled on new boys Chris Woakes and Simon Kerrigan and it looks to have backfired.