Back At Newton!

There are four meetings taking place this afternoon with just one of them a jumps card from our local track at Newton Abbot.  The remainder are all on the level with all-weather fixtures from Southwell, Lingfield and Wolverhampton...who on earth thought that was a good idea?!  Anyway, Lingfield join the twenty's club as they are offering only £29,000 in prize money across their entire six race card - someone has to be making money out of these fixtures, although I am absolutely certain that it is not the owners!  Anyway, onto a track that does things properly - it is great to have Newton Abbot back again with their first fixture of 2015.  The stable has one runner there, recent recruit Drumlee Lad who participates in the novices' hurdle.  He is the winner of a point-to-point and a maiden hurdle in Ireland so it will be interesting to see how he gets on on his Pond House debut under Tom Scudamore.

Talking of Tom Scu, I see that he continued his excellent form yesterday when riding a double aboard a couple of outside rides at Southwell.  I did say that he looked to have some good chances and so it proved - he is now three ahead of Richard Johnson in the race for second in the jockeys' championship.  I have said before that although AP's loss will leave an impossible void to fill, it will certainly make for an interesting championship next year.  There are several possible winners including Tom, Richard Johnson and Sam Twiston-Davies.  I see that David has provided Tom with 79 of his winners, far more than Philip Hobbs or Paul Nicholls have supplied their stable jockeys with.

It was great to see outgoing champion jockey A P McCoy on the Morning Line last weekend talking candidly about his career and impending retirement and it was good to hear him talking fondly about some of his favourite horses and best rides.  Included in this list was Cyfor Malta (pictured above) who Martin trained for the late David Johnson.

‘Cyfor’ joined the Pond House team with a promising reputation as the winner of a hurdle race and two chases in France and he quickly went on to become one of the finest chasers of his generation.  He won the 1998 Cathcart Chase at the Cheltenham Festival and then followed-up with a devastating performance in Aintree’s John Hughes Chase over the Grand National fences as a five year old - quite extraordinary when you consider that horses under the age of seven are not even allowed to contest the Grand National.  Later that year he went on to win the 1998 Murphy’s Gold Cup at Cheltenham’s November meeting and scored again at the course when winning the Pillar Chase later that season.

Unfortunately niggling injuries hindered the remainder of his career although he did manage to win a valuable Newbury handicap chase before finishing runner-up to Florida Pearl in the 2002 Martell Cup at Aintree and then later that year landing a memorable second Thomas Pink (formerly Murphy’s) Gold Cup at Cheltenham.  He was certainly one of the most exciting and best horses that Martin ever had at Pond House – he exuded class and it is great to hear that ‘AP’ is of a similar opinion.

Now, at the age of 22 Cyfor is still doing well and enjoying a happy retirement near Pond House with Martin’s former head lad Dennis Dummett and his partner Norma.  He was kept with Grand National winner Miinnehoma until his sad passing in 2012 and the pair were great companions.  Now he has another former Pond House stalwart for company, high class hurdler/chaser It Takes Time.  As you can see from the photograph (taken only recently) Cyfor still looks a picture of health.

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There is an interesting football match taking place tonight with Scotland taking on Northern Ireland at 7.45pm on Sky Sports.  I reckon the 4/5 on offer about Scotland looks like a good bet to me...that will please Sean at least!

While we are on the subject of football, there was a funny incident at Upton Park when Sunderland fans threw a giant inflatable penis around until a spoil sport steward confiscated it.  One bright spark shouted out "The two foot dick has gone!" to which the response was, "Wow, that's two managers in a week!"...my kind of humour.

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It would appear that Novak Djokovic is now a better player than the rest of the world's tennis players as he beat Andy Murray 6-2 6-3 last week and it looks as though Murray has accepted that the Serbian is superior.  Ladbrokes offer 10/11 about Djokovic and he looks a certainty to me.

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Tiger Woods wants to play in the American Ryder Cup team although his chances of participating looks slim to me.  He is now ranked in the low-nineties in the world rankings and the only way he will get to play is if he is one of the captain's choices.  Given his record in the competition and the way he is playing, I certainly wouldn't want him on my side - in fact, he would struggle to get in my four ball at Churston!

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Finally, prison letters that were written by Dr Crippen who poisoned his wife in 1910 could fetch as much as £5,000 at auction in Devizes, Wilthshire.  I suppose they were poison pen letters!  Keep smiling...

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