A Blank Day

This afternoon there are five meetings taking place with flat action from York, Newcastle and Bath as well as jumps fixtures from Kempton and Perth.  The prize money at a couple of meetings today is truly awful...step forward Newcastle who offer just £34,000 for their eight race card, while Kempton get away with just £30,000 for their jumps meeting.  The stable has no runners today with the defection of Impulsive American on the flat at Bath.  Stable jockey Tom Scudamore travels to Kempton for one ride, while championship leader Richard Johnson goes all the way to Perth for three rides for Gordon Elliott.  Johnson is really setting his stall out early and is four ahead at the top of the table - the 11/8 about him winning his maiden championship is beginning to look good.

If you backed Dubai Shen in the closing bumper at Sedgefield yesterday afternoon you have every reason to feel hard done by.  He was a couple of lengths clear when jinking and unseating rider Craig Nichol fifty yards from the line.  I have no idea why, but you do find that lots of horses have a good look at the paddock as they go past.

There is a good picture of flat trainer Mark Johnston in this morning's Racing Post with his own private aeroplane.  That is all very well, but I don't know of an awful lot of tracks that have a landing strip...imagine trying to land at Chester racecourse where the track is only about 100 yards across (slight exaggeration!) - he would have to parachute out as the plane went over!

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Now that they are out of the Premier League, QPR are trying to cut Joey Barton's wages from £90,000 a week to £30,000 a week.  How will he be able to pay all of those fines now that he is on such poor wages?!  QPR's wage bill is enormous and they desperately need to offload a lot of players or they will be in big financial trouble.

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I see that Andy Murray agrees with me about this ridiculous cricket situation with Kevin Pietersen, while Aussie cricketing legend says we should pick the best team possible (sounds obvious!) and that would include Pietersen.  The last word should go to Piers Morgan however as he is even more qualified than me to tell the selectors how to do their jobs, "Strauss will be sacked by September" - I think he had better stick to chat shows!

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Apparently the Floyd Mayweather versus Manny Pacquiao fight generated £255 million in US television revenues with 4.4 million people paying to watch.  It doubled the previous record which incidentally was also a Mayweather fight.  I say fight, it was more like a dancing lesson...perhaps Len Goodman would have been better off being one of the judges?!

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A final thought for the day...Did you know that lack of sleep will kill a person faster than starvation?  I'm off to bed, see you tomorrow!

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