Weekend Jottings

It is a quieter day today with just a couple of meetings taking place although they are good quality cards for a Sunday with action on the flat at Doncaster (day two of their Lincoln meeting) and over the sticks at Ascot.  The stable has two runners at Ascot, Junior and Bygones Sovereign.  Junior takes in a veteran's chase which looks like a good idea to me - being a former Royal Ascot and Cheltenham Festival winner means that he is only slowly coming down the weights despite advancing years - he still has plenty of weight to carry here, but at least he gets to compete against his own sort of age group.

I was looking through the paper yesterday and was absolutely amazed by the amount of prize money on offer at Meydan.  I know it is the World Cup meeting, but even so, the worst prize money in any race on the card was worth £361,445.78, while the Dubai Duty Free winner picked up a cool £1,807,228.92 and the World Cup over £3.6million!  The combined prize money at Uttoxeter and Stratford's entire meetings was £83,000!  You can see how tracks such as Meydan attract runners from all over the world.  It's hardly surprising the jockeys would rather be riding there during the winter months than around a wet and cold Wolverhampton!

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I was astounded to hear about legendary NFL quarterback Peyton Manning who had to be convinced by his wife to take more money for his new contract!  Can you imagine one of our footballers saying no, that's too much money?!  Manning had to persuaded to take a $12.5million per year deal, after he asked for the same $11.6million as old rival and future hall of famer Tom Brady of the New England Patriots.  Seriously, can you hear Wayne Rooney telling his bosses that he is not worth £300,000 per week...I can't.

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Looking ahead to next week, the Doom Bar Aintree Hurdle looks like it is shaping up to be a cracker with Hurricane Fly, Annie Power, Rock On Ruby and my idea of the winner, The New One all possibles for the race.  It should be a great contest, let's hope that it attracts most of those runners.  With regard to the big race, the Grand National on Saturday it is unoriginal but Tidal Bay and Long Run look like class horses who are well-favoured at the weights and at 16/1 look worth an interest.

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