Three Taunton Runners

This afternoon we have four meetings with jumps fixtures from Ludlow and Taunton as well as a couple of all-weather flat cards from Southwell and Chelmsford City.  David has three runners at Taunton today; Iniciar, Perspicace and Border Breaker.  Iniciar boasted some very useful form on the flat in France with an official mark of 100 - he was only narrowly beaten in Listed company last season - he has schooled well at home and this should be an interesting contest with the likes of Champion bumper runner-up Modus in opposition.  Perspicace has won on this track and the drop back in trip looks as though it could help, while Border Breaker (pictured above), a course winner who has won three times also looks as though this slightly shorter trip will suit.

It was good news yesterday as Tom Scudamore passed the doctor and is now fit to ride at the Paddy Power meeting which starts tomorrow.  I saw Tom school a lot of horses on Tuesday and he certainly looks fit enough for the job for me.  I would imagine that he will be aboard Kings Palace in the Paddy Power Gold Cup although declarations for that race do not take place until 10.15am today and David looks to have a couple of other realistic chances in the race with the likes of Monetaire and La Vaticane.

No wonder A P McCoy has filled out a little bit since deciding to hang up his boots at the end of last season...he must have been to every awards function since!  Last night he was at the Dorchester for the Cartier Racing Awards.  Jack Berry received a standing ovation for his charitable work for racing and he said "Jack Berry House should be called 'Our House'" before going on to add that his Cartier Award would never finish up at a car boot sale "unless it made enough money to fund another charitable project!".

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Why is it that (even allowing for the fact that we won the Ashes) England are so bad at cricket?  Pakistan thrashed them in the one day match yesterday with six of our batsmen not even making it into double figures.  I still cannot understand why Alistair Cook is not playing - he seems to be our only world class batsman.  It is now off to South Africa for more of the same - it might be better if England were to tour somewhere like the Isle Of Wight!

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It looks as if Great Britain are on the verge of a famous victory in the Davis Cup tennis.  All it would take is two wins from Andy Murray and a win in the doubles (again, step forward Murray) and we could beat Belgium.  Come to think of it, can anyone think of a Belgian tennis player?

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I see that a monk was arrested for stealing £350,000 in donations from Italy's historica Montecassino Abbey - talk about a bad habbit!

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