One At Newbury

There are four meetings taking place this afternoon - two jumps fixtures at Newbury and Sedgefield as well as a couple of all-weather flat cards at Lingfield and Wolverhampton.  We have one runner today, Thomas Junior (pictured above) who competes in the three mile handicap hurdle at Newbury at 3.10pm.  Remember he looked unlucky last time out at Huntingdon when sprawling on landing and doing the splits at the third last when holding every chance.  He has shown a consistent level of form and with a clear round of jumping another good run is expected under Tom Scudamore.

I thought that Makadamia ran a decent race at Chepstow yesterday and looks like she is well capable of winning races over hurdles.  She showed decent form in a bumper at Warwick on her racecourse debut and this was a step back in the right direction.  I cannot believe how many false starts there were - the favourite Churchtown Love ran into the tape and unseated his jockey , they caught the horse quickly and he jumped off okay the second time round, although the tape was still on the floor!  Surely there must be a better way of starting races?

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I see that Paul Leach is 60 today.  Paul was MCP's first real stable jockey - you may recall that he rode his first Cheltenham Festival winner, Baron Blakeney to victory in the 1981 Triumph Hurdle.  Paul was so confident he even threw his whip away on the run-in as he beat Peter Scudamore aboard favourite Broadsword!  Leachy is a lovely guy who I still see from time to time.  Baron Blakeney...those were the good old days!

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Graham Swann says that Jos Buttler can swing it for unfancied England in the ICC World Twenty Twenty Championship.  Surely Swann is not talking about the England team I have been watching lately?  The top two in the five team groups will proceed to the next round - personally, I don't think we will even get out of the group stages.

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If you are suffering from the flu perhaps you should consider going to play a round of golf.  That is what Adam Scott did in the Arnold Palmer event in Florida and he shot a record equalling round of 62 - let's hope for his sake that the flu lingers on!

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Apparently Fernando Torres says he could move to Atletico Madrid this summer.  Torres was completely overpriced when Chelsea bought him - it will be interesting to see what any potential buyers will fork out for him.  He has only scored 19 goals in 103 Premier League matches.  I would say that he is a very lucky boy!

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