Four Runners Today

There are four meetings taking place this afternoon, two over the jumps at Haydock and Warwick as well as two all-weather flat meetings at Lingfiled and Kempton.  The stable has four runners today, split evenly between Haydock and Warwick.  Tom Scudamore is aboard Top Gamble (pictured above) and Count Danilo at Haydock, while Conor O'Farrell takes the mounts aboard Saint John Henry and Weather Babe at Warwick.  I thought that Top Gamble looked of particular interest - he looked a most promising recruit last term although he hasn't built on that in two starts this season - despite the burden of top weight a big run is expected.

Record breaking flat performer Stand Guard was withdrawn from the seller at Southwell yesterday which left Neil Mulholland's Mr Burridge to go off the 1/10 favourite.  There do seem to have been some strange sequences of events in these contests recently.  Connections of the winner then had to shell out £20,500 to keep their horse after it had collected just £2587 for his victory - it certainly takes a bit of gloss off the result!  I would be surprised if you saw this one in another seller anytime soon.

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I see that it is Lord Vestey's 73rd birthday today.  I remember a good few years ago that one of our owners had had a few drinks and was talking to Lord Vestey (former racecourse chairman at Cheltenham) and told him that he knew his brother 'Thermal'!  In fairness the Lord took the joke in good part and saw the funny side of the comment - he is a lovely chap and we used to spend hours talking about table tennis.

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Well, as I explained yesterday I went to watch Torquay United play against Bury last night and the Gulls actually managed to pull off a 2-1 victory with their winner coming in the 90th minute.  It was a freezing cold evening and one of the regular supporters told me that it was a great game.  From my point of view, all I saw was a bouncing ball - there was very little control on display and even less skill!  Even the pie at half-time seemed non-league!

I hope that Manchester United put up a good performance tonight against Olympiakos.  I think Moyes has had enough stick for now - Sir Alex Ferguson was in a hurry to get out and he left a lot of old players behind.

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