Next Runners At Wetherby

There are five meetings taking place this afternoon - four on the flat at Kempton, Chepstow, Hamilton and Beverley as well as a jumps card at Cartmel.  The ground at Chepstow is officially described as soft, while at Cartmel the ground is given as good/firm.  I see there are quite a few qualifiers taking place this afternoon and it may just be my suspicious mind, but I always tend to think that some of these will be seen to better effect in the final.  Trainer Rae Guest runs a nice four year old at Chepstow called Calm Attitude who has won his last four starts and looks the type to make a nice hurdler as he clearly stays very well.  The stable has no runners this afternoon and our next representatives will be at Wetherby tomorrow where we will have three runners, including Long Distance hurdle winner Broadway Buffalo (pictured above) who is in line to make his chasing debut.

What a nice predicament Aiden O'Brien finds himself in as he trains the first and second favourites for next weekend's Epsom Derby.  There is some unusual discrepancies between bookmakers with some firms pricing up Australia as their 4/6 favourite, while Ladbrokes offer even money about the jolly.  There is still plenty of money about for second favourite Geoffrey Chaucer which is a 6/1 chance, despite connections saying they would be very surpised if he were good enough to turn over Australia.  As I say, a nice problem to have...

*****

Surely boxers George Groves and Carl Froch have slagged each other off enough to sell out Wembley by now?!  It's a sell out of some 80,000 people, which will be the biggest crowd for a fight in post-war Britain.  I think that Froch will take the re-match far more seriously and apparently he has been training much harder - he has been in with a lot more world class boxers and I will be surprised if he is beaten.  They will both earn a few quid from the fight, which is fair enough considering the hard nature of the sport - it is certainly a lot tougher than picking up £300,000 per week for kicking a leather ball around.

*****

Let's all wish snooker player Ali Carter all the luck in the world as he starts his cancer treatment.  He says, "I'm up for this one...the biggest match of my life", it all just seems terribly unfair to me.

Talking about snooker, I am playing golf with my old mate, six times world snooker champion Ray Reardon.  Ray's legs aren't what they used to be and he uses a buggy to get around, but he still has a great sense of humour and can tell some fantastic stories.  He's still pretty handy on the snooker table too...my son Lester fancied his chances against him the other day but Ray soon had matters in hand with a 107 clearance!  Class is permanent.

Tweet?