Racing League Action

Today there are four flat meetings in Britain, two afternoon fixtures at Yarmouth and Brighton, followed by evening meetings at Chepstow and Sandown.  In Ireland, they have a meeting under both codes with a flat card at Leopardstown and some jumps action at Sligo. 

 The fixture at Chepstow this evening is week three of the Racing League.  I have to confess that with so much sporting action on at the moment I haven’t really had time to watch any of this but I see that the team from the East, managed by Chris Hughes is leading the way at the moment.  They have 365 points and have a big lead over Wales and the West who have 263.5 points on the board.  Yorkshire have a bit of catching up to do and are bringing up there rear with just 109 points after two weeks of competing.  While the East had five winners at Wolverhampton the other evening, tonight could be a chance for the other teams to catch up.  The East have just eight runners across the seven races this evening while Wales and the West have 14 runners and Ireland have thirteen.  I might try and watch a bit this evening to see if it can spark my interest!  The first race is at 5.30pm.

The BHA yesterday released the 2025 racing fixture list.  Prize money will be increased by 10% at Premier race days which is good to hear though the total number of those meetings have reduced slightly from 170 to 162.  These fixtures have to have minimum prize money of £275,000 with no race worth less than £22,000 on the flat, while over jumps the minimum levels will be £250,000 and £16,500.  A total of 1460 fixtures have been programmed for next year, a reduction of just eight from 2024 but the number of races will remain largely unchanged.  Next year, the flat jockeys November holiday will be moved, to start after the final day of the turf season and extended by three days for the busiest jockeys by having rider-restricted cards during those three days.

Yesterday at the Olympics, Great Britain’s Beckett missed out on a sailing medal while our 51 year old skateboarder, Macdonald failed to reach the skateboarding final.  Matthew Hudson-Smith narrowly missed out on gold on the track last night in the men's 400m final but ran a great race to win silver.  In the velodrome yesterday there was bronze for the women's team pursuit cyclists while the men won silver.  Looking ahead to today's action, GB's Leah Crisp goes in the 10km open water swim while we have hopes of medals in the sailing, diving and cycling.  Heptathlete Katarina Johnson-Thompson gets her competition underway while on the track the 4x 100m relay rounds start.  The men's 200m final is something to look forward to in the stadium this evening.  

Aladdin has been banned from the magic carpet race.
Apparently he’s been using, performance enhancing rugs.

Have a good day!