Shot Boii at Carlisle!

         Shot Boii runs today at Carlisle!
Today we just have the one runner at Carlisle, Shot Boii.  It is a long way to travel, but we thought the race looked suitable.  He runs in the 4.55pm handicap chase over three miles and Jack Tudor rides.  He has run well over fences in recent starts, winning at Hereford, finishing second at Warwick and then running better than the bare form suggests when finishing third at Kempton last time.  While he was beaten a long way in the end, he made a bad mistake at the final fence down the far side at Kempton and lost all hope and did really well just to stay on his feet. 

He dropped to the rear of the group because of that despite being just off the lead going into the fence.  He did well to get going and past rivals again, but the front pair had got a little way clear by the time he got going again.  The runner up from that race ran well again to be second to Pachacuti last week, so the form looks solid.  He is about a 5/1 chance in the betting and I don’t see why he won’t be too far away come the finish.

We were due to have Paricolor running at Wincanton this afternoon as well, but he wasn’t quite right yesterday afternoon and so we decided to make him a non-runner and wait for another day.

There are two jumps meetings today at Carlisle and Wincanton and two flat meetings on the all-weather at Lingfield and Newcastle.  There is no racing in Ireland today.

Yesterday was confirmations for the first day of the Cheltenham Festival.  With Constitution Hill ruled out of the Champion hurdle, the Henderson team made the decision to supplement Iberico Lord for the race at a cost of £18,000.  This lightly raced horse is three wins from seven starts over hurdles and won the Greatwood hurdle at Cheltenham in November and the Betfair hurdle at Newbury in February.  He was introduced at 25/1 to the Champion hurdle betting but was soon shortened into 16/1.  There were 11 other confirmations for the race which included favourite State Man, Irish Pont and Lossiemouth who had also been confirmed for the mares hurdle on the same day.  There were 13 confirmations for the mares hurdle, 15 in the Arkle and in the Supreme novices hurdle.  There will be a maximum of 10 in the National hunt chase as the fields begin to take shape more definitively.  Confirmations for Day 2 of the Festival have to be done be by 12 noon today.

Leading owner JP McManus has strengthened his own Festival team by snapping up leading hopes for next week.  He has bought Meetofthewaters who is a fairly short price for the Ultima Chase and also leading Foxhunter horse Its On The line who is 5/2 in the betting..

Last night in the football saw two Champions League matches of round 16. Manchester City 3-1 FC Copenhagen, Manchester City have reached the Champions League quarter-finals for a seventh successive season. Real Madrid 1-1 RB Leipzig, Real Madrid have reached the quarter-finals as RB Leipzig failed to secure 2-1 aggregate win. 

There is European football action this evening in the Europa League and the European Conference League.  There is no British interest in the Europa League but Aston Villa are away to Ajax at 5.45pm in the Conference League.

The England cricketers are back in action today in India in the final test match of the series.  Things have not gone too well over there but hopefully we can bounce back and put up a better performance in this game.

Big moron and Little moron were on a bridge.

Big Moron fell off, but the other didn’t because…he was a little more on!

Have a good day!