Bank Holiday Monday

It is a Bank Holiday Monday with four flat meetings, one jumps card and two meetings in Ireland to keep us entertained.  The flat meetings come from Chepstow, Ripon, Southwell and Epsom while they race over jumps up at Cartmel.  In Ireland, they have two jumps cards at Downpatrick and Ballinrobe.  The stable does not have any runners.

Magical Zoe was the impressive winner of the Ebor at York on Saturday for the Henry De Bromhead team.  She had only run three times on the flat before this but she had been backed beforehand, travelled strongly during the race for jockey Billy Lee before he sent her on from over one furlongs out to score comfortably.  She was fourth in the County hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival and is a very likeable mare.  This win ensure she gets a run in the Melbourne Cup, which connections will surely have to consider now. 

England won the first test cricket match at Old Trafford against Sri Lanka.  It was a tense fourth day and England has some significant scares but Joe Root scored a good half century to steady the ship.  Chasing 205 runs to win, they were wobbling at 70-3 at one stage but they pulled through to win by five wickets and lead the three match series 1-0.

We won’t talk too much about football as Manchester United lost 2-1 away at Brighton but Manchester City and Arsenal are already putting down big markers with impressive wins, City beating Ipswich 4-1 and Arsenal beating Aston Villa 2-0 away. 

The Paralympics are fast approaching and the eleven days of competition get underway on Wednesday.  We have a team of 215 athletes representing GB at the games with a target of 100-140 medals set by UK Sport.  We got 125 in Tokyo, finishing in second place in the medals table behind China.  Swimming, track cycling and Taekwondu get the games underway on Wednesday with medals up for grabs. 

I’ve learned so much from my mistakes that I’m thinking about making a few more!

Happy Monday!