New Week

We start the new week with much milder weather conditions than seven days ago and looking ahead to the racing this week, there are no anticipated weather worries with regards to fixtures taking place.  There is one jumps meeting today at Hereford, we don't have any runners but both Jack Tudor and Rian Corcoran are in action.  There are two all-weather flat meetings at Lingfield and Wolverhampton and in Ireland they race over jumps at Punchestown.

So unfortunately on Saturday, Warwick's Classic chase card was lost to the elements and the only jumps meeting to take place was at Kempton.  There was some great stories with Edwardstone winning again but also some sad post-scripts with the loss of three horses.  All of us involved in racing know this can happen but to have three on the same day at the same meeting is unusual.  My thoughts go out to all connections of those horses.  Racing went ahead on Sunday and conditions were pretty atrocious at Fontwell by the last race and when Activist was running.  He did not enjoy himself and put in one of his lesser displays sadly for us.  

It was not much better at Wadebridge point to point weather wise!  We drove through heavy rain on the way down to Cornwall, and while windy and relatively dry for most of the card but again it turned very wet  towards the end of the day, just when we were in the paddock with Lustfull Lady.  She is quite a character and this was first time of the track for nearly three years.  She was left on her own at the third last fence and then decided she didn't want to go much further and pulled up.  James Shaw looked after her and she will improve a lot for this outing.  Ben Lilly did not enjoy his return to the course on the very soft conditions but jumped well on only his second start over fences and will be better later in the season when the ground is better.

I don't really want to talk about football again as Manchester United are out of the FA Cup after losing 2-1 at home to Brighton yesterday but there was a great win on Saturday for Macclesfield who beat Premiership side Crystal Palace, the biggest upset in FA Cup history.  It was a big loss for Exeter away to Manchester City while a few of the matches were decided by penalties and so there was plenty of exciting games.  The 3rd round action continues this evening as Liverpool play Barnsley at 7.45pm. 

What do you call a beehive without an exit?

Unbelieveable.

Have a good Monday!