It's My Birthday!

The stable enjoyed another winner yesterday when Obistar obliged in the conditional jockeys' hurdle at Plumpton yesterday.  Our five year old needed every yard of the 3m1 1/2f trip and I thought that Kieron Edgar did very well to keep him going after he was headed turning for home.  He stayed on again in fine style from there and had five lengths in hand at the line.  The blinkers clearly helped and Kieron's 3lbs allowance would also have been of assistance on the very testing ground.  Obistar was yet another winner for Brocade Racing who are having something of a season mirabilis.  Meanwhile, Northern Bay finished third under amateur jockey Tom Greatrex on his first ride over hurdles - I thought he did well and he clearly has a bright future ahead of him.

Following the abandonment of Lingfield due to waterlogging there are just two meetings to look forward to this afternoon - there is a jumps card from our local track at Taunton and an all-weather flat meeting from Southwell.  The stable has five runners at Taunton; For 'N' Against and Barneby in the 2.00pm and Border Breaker, Alezanna and Bella in the 2.30pm - they are all quite big odds today and will probably learn for the experience.

I see that there are new plans to allow trainers to withdraw their horses if a significant number of fences or hurdles are omitted.  This happened at Cheltenham at the weekend whereby the last hurdle was omitted and there was a massively long run-in.  I don't remember there being so many omitted hurdles back in the day...were jockeys just braver back then?

Ruby Walsh has some decision to make as to which horse he will ride in the Champion Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival.  He has the choice of dual winner Hurricane Fly or Faugheen - I bet he hopes that The Fly doesn't go to Cheltenham as I think he will choose Faugheen.

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Apparently disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong has said that he would cheat again.  He reckons he has served enough of his ban from all sports - as far as I am concerned drugs cheats should be banned for life and it would be a travesty if they lifted Armstrong's ban.

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There is a good football match on tonight between Chelsea and Liverpool.  The kick-off is at 7.45pm and it is live on Sky Sports.  At 8/13 Chelsea look plenty short enough to me - they were outplayed by Bradford only a few days ago in the FA Cup and Liverpool should be a different proposition.

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Finally, just to put the record straight the Racing Post have my birthday wrong.  Clearly I am not 68, you only have to look at how lively I am to realise that!  Anyway I am never going to be as old as MCP!