Day One At Cheltenham

There is a great day of racing in prospect with four meetings on the menu - two over the sticks at Cheltenham and Bangor and two all-weather flat meetings at Southwell and Wolverhampton.  The stable has runners at both jumps meetings - at Cheltenham we run Vif Argent, Dan Breen, Doctor Harper and Close House, while at Bangor we are represented by Guess Again and The Darling Boy.  Doctor Harper (pictured above) is now the winner of four of his five starts and looks a most promising individual.  This will be his toughest test to date and with the nine runners having won thirteen races between them, it looks like a decent race.  Over at Bangor The Darling Boy makes his first start for the stable after a break of 510 days - he boasts some decent form in this sort of grade although we will know more about him after today.

My breakfast was ruined this morning when I turned to page 54 of the Racing Post only to see a full-page colour picture of David and Dynaste.  I'm not sure which one of them is greyer!  Only kidding David...the horse looks great by the way.  The advert promotes a Peter Thomas interview with David that will be featured in this Sunday's Racing Post supplement - it should be well worth a read.

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I was watching the action from Taunton yesterday and I was wondering what sort of price Fountains Mary must have traded at in running on the exchanges.  She was never travelling and received plenty of reminders from as early as the fifth and was last of all at the third last.  She finally consented to run on and produced a very strong finish to get up to score.

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After lambasting the England cricketers yesterday I thought I was going to have to eat humble pie as they reduced the Aussies to 143-5 in the third Test.  Sadly they let them off the hook again and at the time of writing they have moved onto 260-5...I guess I was right afterall.  I would love to know how the Barmy Army (they are England supporters so they must be barmy!) manage to get time off work to travel to Australia to watch the cricket, or how do they sign on from down under?!

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There was a good result for Tottenham Hotspur as they won 4-1but it will be a different story this weekend as they take on Liverpool - Spurs seem to have struggled this season when they have taken on the proper teams.

My team The Hammers take on Sunderland and if they lose that they will be in serious trouble and I wouldn't be surprised to see Big Sam Allardyce joining the dole queue...