Weekend Jottings!

We have racing this afternoon from one of our local tracks, Exeter up on Haldon Hill so hopefully it will be a nice bright afternoon for racegoers. We will have five runners at the meeting: Painter Man, Another Display, Take Over Sivola, Bumblebee and Water Garden and will be keeping our fingers crossed for a winner or two.

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It's Sunday and one person that deserves a day off is young Brendan Powell Jnr.  The sixteen year old jockey was race riding over hurdles and fences yesterday afternoon before heading off to Wolverhampton to ride on the level at 8.50pm.  Surely at only sixteen years of age he should be in bed at that time of night?!

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I am always amused to read some of the trainers comments in the papers...indeed, there are often headlines like "ready to run for his life", "never had him better", I'm sure he will run well", "He's in very good form", "in fine fettle", "improved enormously".  I don't think I have ever seen them say "no chance", "He's working terribly", "if he wins I will turn the game in"...surely every horse the papers report on cannot be working out of their skins - is it the ever optimistic trainer or sensationalist reporting.

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One trainer who has every reason to be feeling somewhat pleased with himself is Jim Bolger who recently consigned over €4 million worth of livestock to the sales, including Irish Oaks winner Banimpire who fetched a cool €2.3 million.  That is an awful lot of money, but I still remember 26 years ago a horse called Turkish Treasure making £1.2 million - I wonder how much that would be worth today, taking into account inflation?  Either way, it was certainly a good few days for the Irish maestro.

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I was saddened to see that former cricketer Basil d'Olivera passed away yesterday.  I remember having dinner with him and Martin at the Adelphi in Liverpool just before the Grand National back in the early eighties.  Basil was a lovely man and he certainly enjoyed his racing.