Disruption Continues!

While Wincanton were due to race today, the meeting was unfortunately lost earlier in the week due to frozen ground.  They are racing over jumps at Wetherby today however and they have plenty of runners throughout the card as you would expect.  When there has been no racing for a period of time, the back log of horses wanting to run builds up and as you can imagine, it can difficult to get a run into some horses.  Behind the scenes there a plenty of horses being balloted out of races, whether that be novice events where you get a ballot number when the field size capacity reaches maximum or whether you are just too low down in the ratings to get in a particular handicap.   It is rumoured there could be some extra meetings scheduled for the coming days to make up for some of those lost and things will start to settle down a bit when things return to a little more normal. 

The stable did have entries at Wetherby but we did not declare so therefore have no runners today.  Philip Armson is the only jockey of ours in action and he makes the long journey to ride Lopes Dancer in the handicap hurdle at 2.00pm.  He rode this horse last time at Huntingdon where it finished fifth so he will be hoping to try and get in the frame today although it is a very competitive 19 runner field for the grade.  Having a quick look through the card I am going to keep an eye out for The Gooner who runs in the 4.15pm three mile novices handicap hurdle who looks very interesting off a rating of only 100.  He is the winner of an Irish point to point and was then bought for a lot of money, 280,000 Euros at the Punchestown sales.  After two low key placed efforts over hurdles, connections will certainly be hoping he can step up on what he has shown so far.

There are two all-weather meetings today at Southwell and Newcastle while in Ireland they race over jumps at Gowran Park.  Their feature race is the Thyestes Chase at 2.50pm.  It is a very open contest with them betting 15/2 the field for the 18 runner handicap.  While I would like to pick the winner, Gordon Elliott and Willie Mullins have a lot of the runners between them so it would be a surprise if one of them were not to win the 100,000 Euro contest but you never know!

Last night Manchester United beat Nottingham Forest 3-0 in the EFL Cup semi-final.  There is no football action to watch this evening but I do have some golf to keep an eye on.  There is the Dubai Classic being played by Rory McIlroy and others in the Middle East while in America the big names are in action at Torrey Pines.

I moved into a bungalow recently.  I was going to move into a house, but that’s another storey!  Have a good day.