Excellency At Wetherby

Today we have five meetings to look forward to, three over the sticks at Kempton, Leicester and Wetherby as well as a couple of all-weather flat cards at Wolverhampton and Southwell.  The stable has just the one runner at Wetherby, the talented but enigmatic His Excellency (pictured above).  Our five year old has some very good form to his name, including when third behind Simonsig in this year's Arkle Chase at the Cheltenham Festival.  His last win came in 2012 and he appears to be in need of a little assistance from the handicapper.  The big race of the day is the Desert Orchid Chase at Kempton at 2.30pm and marks the eagerly awaited seasonal reappearance of top chaser Sprinter Sacre who was unbeaten in five starts last term.

With a couple of meetings abandoned, yesterday didn't turn out as busy as it could have been with the stable having five runners across the country.  Heath Hunter was the ready winner of the novices' hurdle at Sedgefield under Tom Bellamy, making all to win by a comfortable ten lengths.  There looked to be snow or ice on the track, although it was diffcult to see as they also had a blanket of fog!

Sadly Dynaste was unable to perform to his best in the King George VI Chase at Kempton yesterday.  It just looked like a bad day at the office for our grey gelding, who split the first two home at Haydock last time out.  He is only seven years of age so there will be plenty of other days for him to prove this running to be all wrong.

There was a great finish to the Christmas Hurdle with McCoy at his strongest to prevail aboard My Tent Or Yours.  Personally I believe that if The New One had jumped the last cleanly, the result would have gone the other way.

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It seems like an eternity since I last wrote the following...England appear to be on top in the fourth Ashes test match.  They made 255 in their first innings, but have the Aussies in trouble on 164-9 - could it be that England will have a first innings lead for the first time in the series?  Even so, things could have been better with Kevin Pietersen again getting out trying to hit the bowler out of the ground...will he ever learn?!

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I see that Andy Murray lost his first match back from injury to Jo Wilfried Tsonga 7-5 6-3.  He now plays Wawrinka in a 5th place play-off.  Murray says that the match was good fun, although I'm surprised that he thinks it is ever fun to lose.

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Manchester United managed to get out of jail in the Premier League yesterday to come from 2-0 to beat Hull 3-2.  You could have backed United in play at 9/2 when they were two goals down.