3 Bank Holiday Runners

As you would expect of a Bank Holiday Monday there is a busy afternoon of racing ahead with no less than seven meetings taking place.  There are five jumps fixtures from Plumpton, Fakenham, Market Rasen, Chepstow and Huntingdon as well as flat cards from Wolverhampton and Redcar.  At the moment my neighbouring town Torbay is packed with holiday makers and I cannot for the life of me understand why there is a meeting further south west than Chepstow - great race planning once again!  The stable has three runners this afternoon with Obistar and Gevrey Chambertin (pictured above) at Chepstow partnered by Tom Scudamore, while conditional jockey Michael Heard is aboard Skylander at Plumpton.

I wouldn't be at all surprised to see Skylander run a big race at Plumpton.  This represents a drop in class from his latest start in the EBF Final at Sandown and jockey Michael Heard claims a handy 7lbs off of his back.

Lady Of Longstone ran a good race at Plumpton yesterday afternoon, finishing a close runner-up while trying to concede 8lbs to the winner.  I was very surprised to see her so well backed as she hadn't really progressed since winning a Worcester bumper and I thought that 2/1 was extremely skinny.  Even so, she travelled like the best horse in the race for a long way and this was a step back in the right direction.  She looks capable of winning something similar before too long.

Outgoing champion jockey A P McCoy was in fantastic form yesterday with a double aboard Fairyhouse for his boss J P McManus.  He received a great reception from the crowd and it could be an amazing send off for the man there today were he to win the Irish National aboard 10/1 favourite Cantlow.  The form figures do not look great but you would be foolish to discount anything ridden by AP.

There is a great piece in today's Racing Post about stable jockey Tom Scudamore and the Grand National.  Tom, who will hopefully be aboard Soll in the big one on Saturday has had fourteen rides in the big race and the closest he has managed to finish so far is eighth.  I think that he will go a lot better this time around and I am surprised to see that you can still get 25/1 about Soll.  Meanwhile I see that Broadway Buffalo is among the 12/1 joint favourites for the Scottish Grand National - it would be some performance to win both Nationals!

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On the football front, Sunderland helped lift themselves a little further above the Premier League relegation zone after an amazing Jermain Defoe goal sunk Newcastle 1-0.  This afternoon I will be having a little wager on Manchester City at 7/10 to beat Crystal Palace.  Kick-off is live on Sky at 8pm - you know where I will be!

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British number one tennis player Andy Murray lost for the seventh time to Novak Djokovic in the Miami Open Final over the weekend.  Murray is just extremely unlucky to have been around in the Federer, Nadal and now Djokovic era.  In any other era he would certainly have been a convincing world number one.

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I see that a ban on displaying tobacco in small shops came into force yesterday - I'm sure it is just a smoke screen.

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