Numbers Limited

There are five meetings taking place this afternoon with jumps cards from Warwick and Southwell, flat meetings from Yarmouth and Ayr and an all-weather flat fixture from Kempton.  David does not have any runners today, although we will be back tomorrow with runners at Market Rasen.  The best racing takes place at Ayr today with the 1m4f fillies' and mares' Listed contest the highlight.  There may not be any superstars in the line-up, but the prize has drawn a good field of closely matched, quality horses of which, the Sir Michael Stoute trained A La Voile may be best.  She was just behind favourite Black Lotus last time, but the trainer has an excellent record with his older horses and this one looks a typical improver with that first run of the season under her belt.

Lady Reset ran a respectable race at Huntingdon yesterday.  She looked booked for a place jumping the last, but lost a couple of positions on the run-in but was still only beaten four lengths in total.  She was a little too keen and when settling better, she should be able to win something similar.

It is a shame that just 4,000 spectators will be allowed at each day of the Royal Ascot meeting next month and none of them will be members of the general public.  The allocation will be entirely used for owners, members and hospitality.  I know that we still need to be extremely careful, but given the sprawling open spaces available to people attending Ascot it seems like a very small number, especially when you think there were 21,000 people a the FA Cup Final at Wembley.

*****

I called it yesterday with Chelsea getting some measure of revenge against Leicester last night, beating them 2-1 having lost to their rivals in the FA Cup Final on Sunday.  With the win, Chelsea moved into third in the Premiership with one game left to play, vaulting Leicester who are just three points ahead of Liverpool, who will also move ahead of them if the the reds beat Burnley tonight.  With just one game after that, it should be a nail-biting finish for both sides as the final position in the Champions' League rests upon it.

It looks like the much anticipated heavyweight bout between Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury will not happen as Deontay Wilder had a judge rule in his favour that he should be allowed a third fight with Fury despite suffering a heavy loss against his opponent last time.  He wants $20 million to stand aside to let the Joshua versus Fury fight to take place.  I am obviously in the wrong game - I would gladly not fight Tyson Fury for half that!

*****

A woman watched a dog go into a butcher's shop.
"What is it today?" asked the butcher.  "Pork?"
The dog shook its head.
"Beef?"
The dog shook its head.
"Lamb chops?"
The dog wagged its tail furiously.
The butcher wrapped up two lamb chops, gave them to the dog and the dog trotted out.  The same thing happened the following day and the woman was so intrigued she decided to follow the dog out of the shop.  She saw the dog walk up the steps to a house, stand on his back legs and ring the doorbell with his nose.  A man answered the door and immediately began shouting at the dog.
The woman was incensed.  "You should be ashamed of yourself," she told the man.  "That is the cleverest dog I have ever seen.  He goes to the butcher's, fetches your dinner, brings it home and rings the doorbell.  And you treat him like that!"
"Maybe," said the man, "but it's the third time this week that he has forgotten his key."