Skylander Successful!

The stable enjoyed another nice winner yesterday when Skylander outbattled Sternrubin in the novices' hurdle at Taunton under conditional jockey Michael Heard. Michael has been in tremendous form of late and the horses really seem to be running for him. He is good value for his 7lbs claim and it would be a shame if he did not start to pick up more outside rides on the back of his good form. With the third home rated 121 this looked like a decent contest for the track and a good effort from our progressive winner.

There are supposed to be four meetings taking place this afternoon, although we are still waiting on the outcome of Bangor On Dee's inspection to decide whether racing can go ahead there. There was positive news from Newcastle however as they called off their intended inspection and their meeting goes ahead with no issues as does the Kempton card. Meanwhile there is an all-weather flat meeting taking place from Wolverhampton. The stable was due to have one runner at Bangor this afternoon, Twentytwo's Taken however she is now a non-runner. There has been plenty of media interest in the hunter chase at Bangor today - with the likes of Henrietta Knight, David Loder and Zara Phillips all training runners including high profile horses such as Calgarry Bay and Teaforthree. I am sure there will be plenty of photographers there should the meeting get the thumbs up.

Many happy returns to Rodi Greene who is celebrating his 45th birthday today. You may recall Rodi tasting Cheltenham Festival success in the Coral Cup aboard Ilnamar for MCP. Rodi certainly knew how to give one a ride! Since his retirement from the saddle Rodi has kept busy as a jockey's coach and more recently completed a cycle from Land's End to John O'Groates for charity. We hope you have a great day.

Apparently Huntingdon racecourse will be giving away 9,500 free tickets to locals for their race meeting of 1st March. Personally I think the courses should all admit under 18's to the track free of charge - these are the people we need to be attracting, the race goers of tomorrow. Anyway, I am always keen to applaud a track that is using initiative to get people through the gate, so well done to them!

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Great Britain's ladies tennis players suffered a 2-1 defeat by Turkey in the Fed Cup - they were well stuffed! I bet you cannot name a Turkish lady tennis player (it is hard enough naming a Brit!).

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Finally, another true story...A diver fishing for golf balls in a lake in West Palm Beach, Florida had a real shock when his foot was bitten by a 12 foot alligator. I'm sure there is a golfing joke in there somewhere, although it wouldn't have been a laughing matter for the diver.