No Jumping Saturday

            AP & Richard Johnson
          in action at Barbury today
There are six flat cards at Newmarket, Ascot, York, Chester, Salisbury and Hamilton today.  If you like jumping there is a mixed card at Tipperary, but it's a long way to go!  Sorry I couldn't resist that!  David did originally have two entries at Tipperary today, in the valuable Grimes hurdle we had Dell'arca and Street Entertainer entered but we decided not to travel over on this occasion.  Tomorrow there are three jumps meetings and no flat meetings - race planning!  David has two runners at Stratford, My Brother Sylvest and Purple N Gold and two runners at Southwell, Sir Frank Morgan and Skylander.  Check back here tomorrow for more news.

AP returns to riding this weekend, it is only 77 days since he retired!  He will be riding at the Barbury Horse Trials just off junction 15 of the M4.  He will be riding alongside Richard Johnson.  He has also signed up to ride in the Legends charity race at Doncaster.  If you want to go to Barbury tickets are £20 on the gate, under 12s get in free.

It's a hard life even being a flat jockey, Ryan Moore is waiting to have a MRI scan on his neck.  He banged his head in an incident in the stalls at Newmarket on Thursday.  Hopefully everything will be okay and he will not be out of action too long.

It is one of MCP's old owners, Frank Farrant's birthday today, he is 68.  Frank had some good horses with MCP inlcuding Valfinet and Heros Fatal to name two of them.  I wonder what present lovely wife Alison will be surprising him with?  It is also David Richmond's 46th birthday.  He was one of our conditional jockeys at one time.  Happy Birthday to them both.

It is good to see a Group 1 race has 15 runners today.  The Darley July Cup at Newmarket and it looks very competitive over 6 furlongs.  The three year old Muhaarar was really impressive last time out at Ascot and a similar level of form should make him very hard to beat.

I watched Scot Andy Murray get slaughtered by Roger Federer 3-0 yesterday at Wimbledon.  Murray is a good player who played very well but Federer is a great player.  The Swiss genius has won Wimbledon seven times and looked different class, he was magical to watch.  Murray let out a few choice words, did he go to the same school as Prince Philip?!  Roger Federer will play Novak Djokovic in Sunday's final who beat French man Richard Gasquet in similar style.  It looks set to be a cracking final.  It is the ladies final today, Serena Williams versus Carbine Muguruza.  Williams is 6/1 on so I don't think she is going to be mugged and the Serena slam is on!

The England cricketers have two days to bowl out the Aussies in Cardiff.  The pitch is swinging and James Anderson will be moving the ball around on this pitch.  Let's just hope the rain stays away as it should be a fascinating watch.

Some great golf funnies - I play golf like Cinderella - I never make it to the ball!  I gave up golf for painting because it takes me less strokes!  Dwight D Eisenhower.  Have a good day.