Another Win for Bashful?

Bashful Boy runs at Lingfield Today!

Today we have two runners at two different meetings under two different codes!  American Sniper runs over hurdles at Newbury while Bashful Boy runs on the flat at Lingfield.  American Sniper runs in the 2.15pm novices hurdle with Philip Armson on board.  Our five year old has had a terrific season so far winning two hurdles and being placed four times as well.  He had an extremely rare bad run at Leicester last time but hopefully that was due to the extremely testing conditions at Leicester where the going was heavy and very hard work.  He has had a little break since then and is in good form at home and will appreciate the better going this afternoon.  Tom Scu has been on board for all his hurdle starts to date but Philip did ride him in a bumper to finish second and knows him well.  He does have to carry a double penalty for those wins and on official figures he does have a bit to find with the favourite, Twig but Philip does take three pounds off and I think he will run well.

Bashful Boy runs in the final race on the Lingfield card, the 4.40pm handicap over 1m7f.  He was an easy course and distance winner on Saturday and runs today with a four pound penalty, so is officially two pounds ‘well in’.  Rob Hornby is unable to ride today so we have booked Jamie Spencer to ride.  Jamie was on board the horse that finished second to Bashful Boy on Saturday so should know how to ride our fella!  Bashful Boy seems to have come out of his race at the weekend very well and looks to have an excellent chance of following up.  There are only four runners and it does look a trickier race than last time but I think our boy can win again.

Yesterday at Taunton, unfortunately Ferdinand Star did not ‘face’ the tongue strap and the writing was on the wall from an early stage.  He was never really going and Nick Scholfield pulled him up down the back the last time.  It is funny, we of course practice our horses in a tongue strap at home before they run and he was absolutely fine but for some reason he took a real disliking to it yesterday during the race.  Back to the drawing board.

Alongside jump racing at Newbury there is all action over the sticks up at Doncaster.  On the flat they race at Lingfield and Newcastle while in Ireland they race on the all-weather at Dundalk.  The field sizes at both jumps meetings are a bit mixed with some races having good size fields and some with only just a few runners.  Once again the tracks are doing their best with watering but they could really just do with a bit of help from mother nature!

No Football today to talk about but the England cricket team play Bangladesh in a One Day International Series.  England won by three wickets in the first match just two days ago and hopefully they can win again.  There is also golf action for me to watch this evening with the second day of the Arnold Palmer Invitational event.  All the big names are in action and it should be a good watch.

I asked my friend when their birthday was.  He said March 1^st.  I stood up, walked around the room and asked again!  Happy Friday!