Kempton, Bangor Runners

There are four meetings taking place this afternoon with jumps action from Kempton and Bangor (who have survived their early morning inspection).  There are also all-weather flat cards at Southwell and Newcastle.  David has three runners this afternoon; Nice Thoughts at Bangor and Gevrey Chambertin and Heath Hunter at Kempton.  Nice Thoughts goes in the two mile handicap hurdle at Bangor and he has some decent bits and pieces of placed form but has had a few opportunities now - Michael Heard takes 5lbs off his back.  Gevrey Chambertin (pictured above) has plenty of ability but the former fixed brush hurdle winner is something of an enigma - he is undeniably fairly treated on his best form but would need to improve on recent efforts to figure in this three mile handicap chase.  Heath Hunter is another to have slipped to a fair mark but he too needs to improve on most recent efforts in this competitive 20 runners handicap hurdle.  Tom Scudamore rides both our Kempton runners.

I thought that Ramses de Teille ran a very nice race to finish second at Doncaster yesterday afternoon under David Noonan.  The winner already has a rating of 130 so this was a decent performance - let's hope that Mr Nasty does not alter our handicap mark!  Our former Irish point-to-point winner will clearly get further and he looks like he will be winning sooner rather than later based on this effort.

What good does a two runner race do for racing?  There is a two runner graduation chase from Kempton this afternoon and there is a 1/6 chance so it is uncompetitive to say the least.  As far as I am concerned these races should be scrapped when they are not going to draw enough interest - there is a big field bumper and hurdle on the card so why not split one of those and get rid of the graduation chase?

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Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger certainly knows how to upset his supporters.  He said the Arsenal faithful should be more like the Spurs fans and get behind their team - I don't think any of their supporters would like to be compared to Spurs fans...I reckon the once great manager's days are just about numbered.  Talking of football, how on earth can Manchester United be the most lucrative club in football yet be in debt to the tune of £409 million?  If this company was in a different sector heads would roll!  Perhaps they should get Wenger in charge to get them back into profit (at the expense of all the silverware admittedly)?!

Joe Root was interviewed by former England cricket skipper Andrew Strauss yesterday for the vacant captaincy position.  Why they don't just name him the new skipper I don't...everybody knows that he is that natural successor to Cook.

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I went shopping for some new camouflage trousers the other day...unfortunately, I couldn't find any!

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