No Sign Of Let Up Yet

It is still bitterly cold this morning at Pond House, its say -2c but this is the first day we have a wind which is very raw and making the temperatures feel lower than what it is reading.  Wednesday is weigh day here at Pond House and so the scales have been uncovered and all the horses are under going their weekly weigh in!  Newbury was the only jumps fixture due to take place today but that was called off on Monday.  We do have have one runner declared for Ffos Las tomorrow, Pachacuti.  While we are still waiting for an update from the course this morning, they were hopeful yesterday with the course covered but we will just have to wait and see what happens.

Yesterday we made all the declarations for Exeter's Thursday meeting only for it to be called off before midday.  I am not sure of the reasonings behind the time it was called off, I suspect it is something to do with racecourse insurance but we went through the process of declaring and telling owners, only to then have to tell them it was abandoned not much more than an hour afterwards!  Obviously, when making the declarations we knew that it was unlikely to be on but it is a little frustrating to have to go through all this when it probably had no chance of being on in the first place!

Prospects for jumps racing going ahead in the next few days do not look that good.  I have seen photos of Ascot which looks white and frozen, they are inspecting 8am tomorrow morning to se if they can race there on Friday.  Haydock are also having a look at 8am tomorrow morning ahead of their Saturday card which looks to have very little chance. It looks like temperatures may begin to rise on Sunday so fingers crossed we may get some racing back from the start of next week.  We would then all like it to rain as well as we haven't had any of the wet stuff now for a while either!  I always seem to be talking about the weather!  I see that jockey Conor O'Farrell and a few of his fellow Northern colleagues decided to take a very last minute skiing trip this week.  I'm guessing they saw the prospects of racing looking slim and took advantage of the unplanned mini-break!  I am not sure where they have gone, the Alps I believe but they look to be having a great time and I just hope they don't pick up any injuries!

Yesterday we had the Racing TV cameras here with Rishi Persad and Steve Mellish filming a piece with MCP.  They say it will be aired in March sometime before the Cheltenham Festival, I will let you know when it is going to be on.

There are no such weather problems in Qatar at the moment.  I thought last night's semi-final between Argentina and Croatia was going to be quite a tight and dull affair but I was pleasantly surprised.  While Croatia looked like a bit of a tired team, Argentina turned their play up a gear to win 3-0.  Messi was on great form, scored a penalty and then set up their other two goals.  The other semi-final takes place this evening between France and Morocco.  I have enjoyed watching the African team but I think France will put them in their place this evening and we will see a France versus Argentina final at the weekend.

I've been teaching myself to juggle clocks.  People are saying I've got too much time on my hands!  Have a good day!