Crowley Crowned!

This afternoon there are five meetings taking place with flat action from Haydock, Redcar and Newcastle as well as jumps action from Fakenham and Wincanton.  There are small fields at Wincanton this afternoon and I can only imagine that the trainers are concerned about running their winter jumpers on a quickish surface (currently good/firm, firm in places).  Stable jockey Tom Scudamore heads off to Fakenham for a couple of long-priced outside rides.  I wonder how he advertises his car when he wants to sell it?  6 months old, 100,000 miles on the clock?!

Congratulations to Jim Crowley who is about to be crowned champion flat jockey for the first time.  He started the season as a 66/1 chance and finished up winning quite comfortably from Sylvestre de Sousa, in the process beating Sir A P McCoy's record with 46 winners in a month (the previous best being 41).  The amazing thing is that he has been able to keep his weight down - remember during the early years of his riding career he was plying his trade as a jump jockey.

I was amused to see a winner at Carlisle yesterday was owned by a syndicate called Don't Tell The Wife Racing Ltd.  I wonder how many of the wives are aware?

*****

It looks as though Gareth Bale is going to be staying at Real Madrid.  Manchester United had expressed an interest in purchasing him, although the buy out clause from his current contract is £450,000,000 - I can' t see anyone forking out that sort of money, can you?

Can you believe it?!  Argentinian football legends Diego Maradonna and Juan Veron had a bust-up in a football match and wait for it...they were playing in the Pope Francis supported United For Peace game in Rome!  I saw it on television and it did look nasty.

There have been a few upsets in the English Open snooker tournament with Ronnie O'Sullivan losing to world number 70 and former Asda delivery driver Chris Wakelin yesterday.  I wouldn't want to be having a wager on this event.

England's cricketers have a day off after the first day of their match against the Bangladesh XI was called off because of torrential rain.  Funny, I never think of countries like that getting loads of rain.

*****

Mrs Barnes has finally left me because of my obsession with history...even though I told her it was all in the past!

Tweet