4 At Exeter Today

There are four meetings taking place this afternoon with flat action from Windsor, Lingfield and Wolverhampton as well as a jumps fixture from Exeter.  David runs Lilbourne Legacy, For 'N' Against, Prince Of Poets and Border Breaker at the Devon track and he looks to have a chance or two on what looks like a tricky card.  For 'N' Against is forecast second favourite for the amateur riders novices' hurdle having finished a decent second at the track last time out over fences.  He is partnered by David Noonan who is the leading amateur so far this season.  Meanwhile Prince Of Poets has run better on his last couple of starts and the bookmakers have him at around the 11/2 mark.  Border Breaker has been in good form this campaign and looks to have a fair chance from a mark of 128 having already been successful from 125.

David had ace presenter Mike Vince in the yard yesterday to conduct his annual video interviews with the Pond House staff.  Some of them certainly make for interesting viewing and there are clearly a few shrewd judges about the place as you were pointed in the direction of plenty of winners twelve months ago.  Hopefully there will be a few more this time around and we kick of the series with the master of Pond House himself - David's interview can be viewed on his blog now.

Channel 4 figures were once again disappointing for their coverage of the Champions Day meeting from Ascot at the weekend.  They reported a 34% decline from twelve months ago despite spending an awful lot of money and time on the coverage.  Perhaps the show is just too long?  When ITV used to cover ping pong years ago it would attract far more than 367,000 viewers but then there were no big gaps between matches.  Mrs Barnes (who is a fair barometer for housewife viewers) tells me that there is too much rubbish between races and it gets far too technical.  She would also like to know why they need 30 minutes between races?  If you were to go to your local betting office you are being hit with action all the time, whether it be horse racing, dog racing, virtual racing or even numbers draws - I am not advocating virtual racing or other nonsense such as that but perhaps if there was more action and less analysis it would make for better viewing figures?  There is also a complete drought as far as noisy, outlandish characters are concerned...love him or hate him, John McCririck always made for interesting television and wasn't afraid to ask the questions that people wanted to know about.  Something clearly needs to be done or racing will be leaving the terrestrial channels for good.

It was another good weekend for Ryan Moore with a Group One double at Woodbine, Canada.  Curvy was for David Wachman while the other was Cannock Chase for Sir Michael Stoute...I wonder what his travelling fees are?  By the way, Ryan is now on his way to Australia to partner Highland Reel in the Cox Plate and I wouldn't bet against him landing that either!

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Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho has been ordered by the FA to keep his mouth shut for a year.  I had a phone around but I couldn't find a bookmaker willing to lay me a price that he couldn't keep quiet for twelve months!

It's the Champions League tonight but I won't be getting too heavily involved.  The biggest problem is you just do not know what sort of team each side is going to turn out.  Arsenal are bottom of the League while Bayern Munich are top - you can back the Germans at 21/20 and they look the likeliest winners to me.  Meanwhile Accrington play AFC Wimbledon in the play-off zone and at 6/4 should be worth an interest.

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I see that bull Trueman Jagger sold for a world record £147,000 at auction in Carlisle.  Apparently he is a limousin breed and is called Jagger owing to his big lips...and that's no bull!

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