Six Flat Cards Today

It's a busy day of flat action with six meetings taking place from Doncaster, Musselburgh, Yarmouth, Newcastle, Chester and Newmarket, although sadly it's another blank day for jumping fans.  Yarmouth somehow manage to get away with offering just £31,000 prize money across their seven race card - I remember we nearly had that much on offer for the Donkey Derby during my time at Pontins!

It's a busy day of flat action with six meetings taking place from Doncaster, Musselburgh, Yarmouth, Newcastle, Chester and Newmarket, although sadly it's another blank day for jumping fans.  Yarmouth somehow manage to get away with offering just £31,000 prize money across their seven race card - I remember we nearly had that much on offer for the Donkey Derby during my time at Pontins!

Our next runners will come on Sunday at Uttoxeter and the John Smith's Summer Cup is very much the feature.  There is good prize money up for grabs for this time of year and David is well represented in the big chase with Perth Gold Cup winner Guess Again featuring among the entries along with No Secrets and recent French third Vif Argent (pictured below on the gallops).

My Newmarket man tells me that Sir Mark Prescott finally has his string in good order and I will be expecting to see plenty of winners from his stable, having missed a sizeable portion of this term.  Can you imagine how disappointing it must be for a large flat yard to have to miss four of the five Classics as well as all of Royal Ascot?  I am told that Big Thunder is working well and a big run is expected from him in the Northumberland Plate at Newcastle tomorrow afternoon.  Sir Mark is an extremely astute trainer and is a past master at picking up these big handicaps.

Many happy returns to Mercy Rimell who is 95 today.  She was a very successful trainer in her own right with the likes of Gaye Brief and Gaye Chance and she still sometimes comes into our Cheltenham Festival marquee.

I see that former Channel 4 Racing presenter Lesley Graham embarks on a 1400km bicycle ride from St Malo to Cannes.  Apparently she has already fallen off three times in training - surely she should think about getting the stablisers unpacked?!  She had better watch out for flying Italian owner Gino Paletta as that is one of his routes - I would imagine that Lesley will be travelling faster however!  In all seriousness though, Lesley is raising valuable funds for Racing Welfare and you can donate by visiting https://mydonate.bt.com/donation/donation.html

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It looks as though FIFA have completely bottled it regarding the latest Suarez biting incident.  They have banned the Uruguayan forward for four months after this third biting incident...go figure, Rio Ferdinand was previously banned for eight months for missing a drug test which he passed at a later date.  FIFA should certainly have sunk their teeth into him and banned him for at least a year.  Maybe he should have a doctor or a dentist remove all of his teeth?!  Just think, if he had false teeth he could give them to the referee before the start of each match!  Suarez was also fined the grand total of £66,000 - sounds like a lot of money right?  To him, just two days wages!

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The Glastonbury Festival has started and Wimbledon is on, no wonder there has been a break in the weather!  Whenever these two events take place you can more or less guarantee that it is going to tip it down!  Get your wellies out for the Festival...

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