First Wincanton Fixture!

There are five meetings taking place this afternoon with flat cards from Haydock, Redcar and Wolverhampton as well as two jumps fixtures from Wincanton and Fakenham.  The stable has two runners at Wincanton; Houston Dynimo and A Hairy Koala.  Houston Dynimo has won eight times under rules and will go on the ground although he is still 10lbs higher than his last winning mark (which came over hurdles) so he will need to be on top of his game to win from 120 today.  A Hairy Koala has a couple of pieces of placed form that would give him a squeak in the handicap hurdle at 4.45pm although he has been a little disappointing so far this season.

It is the first meeting of the season at Wincanton this afternoon and they have an interesting programme lined-up with a number of the leading local trainers conducting interviews and parading some of their stable stars.  David will be among them and he is taking Bidourey and French Champion Hurdle winner Un Temps Pour Tout along.

I thought that Skylander ran a cracker yesterday to finish runner-up at Uttoxeter.  I thought this was a competitive race which should throw up plenty of winners and Skylander looked to run right up to his best under Michael Heard.  There look to be plenty more races to be won with him.  Meanwhile Still Together was a little disappointing up at Carlisle and is clearly better than he showed here.

Unfortunately stable jockey Tom Scudamore is facing a couple of weeks on the sidelines after damaging knee ligaments in a fall at Huntingdon on Tuesday.  He is hoping to be back before the Paddy Power meeting at Cheltenham and I am sure you will join me in wishing me a speedy recovery.

The word from the Gosden camp is that Jack Hobbs will win the Champion Stakes at Ascot this weekend regardless of the draw.  Apparently he did his best ever piece of work earlier in the week and is in tip-top form.  You can still get a bit of 5/4 about him and he looks by far the likeliest winner to me.

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There was a good century from England cricket captain Alistair Cook yesterday, although you know it is a flat wicket when the commentators say that they wouldn't mind batting on it!  I hope a few of you followed me and had a bit of the 8/11 about the draw - that result is now a 1/7 chance and looking increasingly more likely all the time.

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I see that Eugenie Bouchard is sueing the US Tennis Federation after falling in a dressing room at the US Open last month.  With a name like Eugenie you would have thought he would have seen the fall coming!

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What do you call a Cuban with an upset tummy?  Castro Enterites!  Sorry, that was a sick joke...

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