Football Royalty

The Pond House team welcomed a special visitor to the yard yesterday when we were joined by Sir Geoff Hurst, England's hat-trick scoring hero from the 1966 World Cup.  It was the idea of Fergus Wilson to get Sir Geoff down to the yard and the timing could hardly have been better following England's Women's European Cup success on Sunday.  He happily posed with staff and the horses for photographs and signed an enormous amount of pictures and footballs during his visit.  In tremendous shape for a man in his 80's, he was a tremendous sport and even took a number of penalties against the children present.

It was warm last night and there is no sign of a respite today with temperatures already above 20ºc at 7.30am this morning, not that I am complaining - I certainly prefer it that way than sub-zero!  There are five meetings taking place this afternoon with flat fixtures from Brighton, Pontefract and Yarmouth and all-weather action from Newcastle and Kempton.  The best of the racing in terms of quality, comes from Pontefract where the 2m1f 0-95 handicap is their most valuable race of the day and it looks to be at the mercy of a couple of progressive three year old's who receive generous age allowances.

One of the track's that is suffering with the recent dry spell is Bath.  They have just had to abandon their next two meetings, scheduled to take place mid-month, with the fixtures being moved to Wolverhampton on the all-weather.  Fast ground at Bath is nothing new - there is no watering system at the track and it's very exposed on Lansdown Hill, however they have only had one day of significant rain in July and there is no more in the forecast.  With the ground already hard, they had no other option than to call the meetings off, which is obviously a major blow for the track in terms of lost revenue.

*****

There was another good day for England in the Commonwealth Games yesterday, with another 32 medals added to the tally.  Indeed, they are only 16 medals (11 gold) behind Australia with a further 60 back to New Zealand, who are currently in third place in the standings.  There is more action from the pool today, as well as athletics, cycling, judo and weightlifting.

*****

I have just had a near-sex experience.  My wife flashed before my eyes.