Four Meetings Today

Today there are four meetings taking place, one on the flat at Wolverhampton as well as three jumps cards at Ludlow, Carlisle and Southwell, while there is also a National Hunt fixture in Ireland at Thurles, which unsurprisingly has the most prize money of offer today.  We didn't hit the mark with our three runners yesterday at Fontwell with Decoy running a strange race in the handicap hurdle.  He looked to be going as well as anything going down the back straight on the final circuit but he stumbled and ran wide on the final turn, losing all chance of winning and in the end finishing sixth.  He is certainly better than this performance would suggest, while Party Girls will probably appreciate better ground.

Today there are four meetings taking place, one on the flat at Wolverhampton as well as three jumps cards at Ludlow, Carlisle and Southwell, while there is also a National Hunt fixture in Ireland at Thurles, which unsurprisingly has the most prize money of offer today.  We didn't hit the mark with our three runners yesterday at Fontwell with Decoy running a strange race in the handicap hurdle.  He looked to be going as well as anything going down the back straight on the final circuit but he stumbled and ran wide on the final turn, losing all chance of winning and in the end finishing sixth.  He is certainly better than this performance would suggest, while Party Girls will probably appreciate better ground.

We have been featuring our video interview with jockey Conor O'Farrell this week and you can see what he had to say by clicking on the movie below, meanwhile on David's weekly blog he has an interview with stable jockey Tom Scudamore...

Even though ARC shut down Hereford racecourse, there are still ongoing debates about the track's future.  I am not quite sure why they would oppose proposals to put a golf driving range in the centre of the course which now sees only half a dozen Arabian meetings take place - it sounds like a good way of generating a bit of revenue from the now from the facililty.

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I was saddened to read of the passing of former Cheltenham Festival winner Cooldine earlier in the week and also that both Denman and St Nicholas Abbey have been fighting illness themselves.  Let's hope that Denman and St Nicholas Abbey continue to make satisfactory progress.

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I was talking about Sir Alex Ferguson's new book yesterday, but even the great man would not be able to keep Crystal Palace in the Premier League - these chairmen do not live in the real world!  Ian Holloway has now left the club - he is such a nice person though that he is going to help the co-chairman Steve Parish find his successor!  They should have tried to talk Holloway into staying on as manager - whoever takes over is already doomed to failure.

There has been much made of the way in which we can prevent racism in football and rightly so.  As far as I can see, the only way to effectively enforce this is to kick guilty teams out of competitions and close down their stadiums.  It sounds like an extreme measure, but it would soon help to eliminate the problem.  Yaya Toure was subjected to some sickening racist abuse in Russia last night as Manchester City beat CSKA Moscow.  It seems to me that UEFA have no bottle and will probably only give the guilty party a smack on the wrist.