Off To Exeter!

There are three meetings taking place this afternoon with jumps cards from Exeter and Carlisle as well as an all-weather flat fixture from Southwell.  The stable runs Classical Art and Sadlers Gold at Exeter and hopefully we go there with a couple of decent chances.  Classical Art was a winner at Taunton twelve days ago when forcing a dead-heat with Princess Ombu and David leaves conditional jockey Michael Heard on board taking a very handy 7lbs off his back.  I see the Post have Sadlers Gold as their even money favourite and this looks like a race that he can win.

I see that a committee has been formed to assess the state of jump racing in Great Britain.  This is a great idea and I can think of nobody better to oversee it than former Cheltenham CEO Edward Gillespie.  The committee will comprise people from all areas of the sport including trainers, jockeys, bookmakers and journalists so hopefully the broad spectrum will give a balanced view of where the sport can improve in a number of key areas.  For my part though, I hope they will take a look a race planning...it is something that I have long banged on about.  Just look at next week as a case in point - there are fixtures at Newton Abbot on 20th April, Exeter on 21st April and Taunton on 22nd April.  While this sort of program might work for holiday makers, it certainly will not work for trainers - with many of the same sort of race being replicated on each day it is my opinion that they are going to struggle for runners.  To have three meetings so geographically close to each other on successive days is to my mind nothing short of ridiculous.

I always enjoy taking a look through the French results, especially the claimers.  They seem to have an awful lot of them and it is something I think we should have more of over here.  There were two claimers on the card at Maisons-Laffitte yesterday and they were both worth in excess of £7,000 to the winner...prize money you could only dream about on these shores!

Kieron Edgar has made the long trip up to Carlisle to ride one horse for J P McManus in the conditional jockeys race and he is forecast favourite according to the paper.  It must be a huge privilege to be asked to ride for JP and it is certainly a nice outside ride to pick up.

*****

I was watching the Test match cricket between England and the West Indies and the thing that struck me was how small the crowd in Antigua was.  The stadium only looked to be half full and I wonder if it is a telling sign of the declining popularity of the five day format?  When I used to play ping pong in Antigua, cricket was massively popular over there and everyone enjoyed playing as well - now it seems to be that basketball and baseball are the main sports.  Meanwhile, England did recover from a poor start to reach 341 for 5 with a great 143 from Ian Bell and 83 from Joe Root to get the visitors out of trouble.

*****

Liverpool weren't stretched to beat Newcastle 2-0 yesterday in what looked more like a practice game.  It is turning out to be a real battle at the bottom of the table to see who will stay up and get all the Sky money.  It looks like Raheen Sterling needs someone to get hold of him and straightening out before he gets into serious trouble.  There are newspaper pictures of him inhaling from a balloon the dangerous legal high 'hippy crack'.  For all that, he scored a cracking goal last night and he didn't look like a dope!

I am off to watch Torquay United versus Lincoln tonight - I always visit Plainmoor once a year...I couldn't stand any more!

*****

Finally, a fact for the day...did you know that mosquitoes are attracted to the colour blue more than any other colour?  Now you know what to do when you go on holiday!

Tweet