Quiet Tuesday

There are four flat meetings today at Goodwood, Chepstow, Southwell and Wolverhampton.  In Ireland they have a flat card at Gowran Park and there is no jumps racing either side of the Irish Sea, the stable does not have any runners.

There was a press day at Ballydoyle yesterday ahead of the Irish Champion Festival weekend and Aidan O'Brien revealed that jockey Christophe Soumillon will be a big part of their plans in the coming months with Ryan Moore on the sidelines.  Soumillion is a World class jockey and he rode Diego Velazquez to victory for the team in the Group 1 Prix Jacques Le Marois only last month.  He is not attached to a specific stable and I am sure they will be putting his experience to good use in the coming weeks with plenty of big races coming up.

We do have an early closing entries this morning for jumps, with the Goffs Hundred Grand bumper closing at Noon.  This race takes place at Newbury in March and next year it will be on Saturday 21st.  It is for four and five year old horses who were sold under the hammer at the Goffs UK Doncaster Spring Sales of May 2024 and 2025.  It is advertised as the World's richest bumper and we will be entering a horse called Show Your Hand who was purchased this summer.  Obviously at his stage, the majority of horses are relatively untried and quite often un-named but it is worth an entry at this stage and we will just have to see how the season progresses.  You cannot enter at a later date so it is better to enter and then take them out rather than discover in a few months time that you have a very good horse but didn't enter in the race!   

It was transfer deadline day for football yesterday and as expected there was a British record transfer deal with Alexander Isak moving from Newcastle to Liverpool for £125 million.  A total of £3.087 billion has been spent by clubs in this transfer window by Premier League clubs which is incredible and was significantly more than was spent this time last year (£1.96 billion).

The England men's cricket team play a one day International match against South Africa today starting at 11am.  Hopefully the rain will not interrupt this fixture at Headingly too much.  

It is quarter final time at the US Open tennis and all the top names in the men's game have made it through to this stage.  Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic are all still in the men's draw and while I don't know so much about the women's side, I did watch Coco Gauff (3rd seed) get knocked out yesterday by Japanese player Naomi Osaka last night.

Me: Can I open a joint account?

Banker: Sure, with who?

Me: I'm not picky, anyone rich will do.

Have a great day!