5 Runners At Rasen!

It's a bumper day of action this afternoon with seven fixtures taking place on these shores this afternoon; five of them are on the level at Newbury, Newmarket, Ripon, Haydock and Lingfield, while there are also a couple of quality jumps cards from Market Rasen and Cartmel.  Of course, the meeting at the Curragh over in Ireland has the most prize money on offer with £617,000 up for grabs, although that is hardly surprising on this occasion as the feature race is the Group One Irish Oaks.  It is Summer Plate day at Market Rasen and there is some cracking good jump racing to look forward to with two Listed races and a valuable hurdle on the card.  The stable has five runners at the meeting; Intermath, Serienschock, Hawkhill, Guess Again and Leader Of The Gang.  Serienschock (pictured above) and Hawkhill are both exciting new recruits to the stable and on old form they look feasibly treated, although it is very competitive racing.

A P McCoy has a good looking book of rides at Market Rasen with three forecast favourites so he looks to have an outstanding chance of finally surpassing Martin's total of 4191 winners.

I see that flat champion jockey Richard Hughes has said that he hopes he never has to ride at the Chelmsford City course (formerly Great Leighs).  He says that he does not like the all-weatherracing as organisers get plenty of money for putting on low grade racing, while one of the few overheads to the course is the tractor to maintain the surface.  I have to say that I agree with him - they only seem to be put on as betting shop fodder, not that that many people even bother with those anymore either...they just seem to be glorified amusement arcades.  Somehow I don't think Hughsie will be made to feel that welcom the next time he is in Chelmsford!

Many happy returns to Hadden Frost who is 24 today.  Hadden is a lovely young lad (although he does often appear to be in a world of his own!) who rode a Cheltenham Festival winner for David aboard Buena Vista in the Pertemps Handicap Hurdle Final a few years ago - we hope you have a great day.

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It looks like Rory McIlroy has finally managed to get himself 'in the zone' and put two good rounds of golf together in the Open championship.  McIlroy carded a score of 66 on day one and followed that up with another round of 66 yesterday to move six shots clear of the field.  I think two par rounds now should be good enough to do it for him, having said that, things are rarely that easy!

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