National Weights Today!

We have just the one runner this afternoon and it is a long way up to Ayr with The Tracey Shuffle.  The owners live in Scotland so there will be plenty of support for our runner and hopefully they will all be celebrating a win for their six year old.  The horsebox left yesterday morning at 10am so the horse can have a good night's rest after all that travelling.

The Tracy Shuffle (nearside) runs this afternoon at Ayr

We have just the one runner this afternoon and it is a long way up to Ayr with The Tracey Shuffle. The owners live in Scotland so there will be plenty of support for our runner and hopefully they will all be celebrating a win for their six year old. The horsebox left yesterday morning at 10am so the horse can have a good night's rest after all that travelling.

The Grand National weights were unveiled at the Savoy Hotel in London this morning and as anticipated Lexus Chase and former Welsh National winner Synchronised heads the entries on 11-10 ahead of last year’s victor, Ballabriggs on 11-9.  Of his entries David said, “We are right where we thought we would be – Junior has enough weight with 11-2 but the handicapper always compresses the weights to encourage the best possible field.  That means that all of our entries are badly off with several of the topweights but that is not a new scenario and the handicapper faces a very difficult task in trying to make the race as competitive as possible without alienating those further down the handicap.  Massini’s Maguire has been a very high class horse throughout his entire career and a weight of 10-11 looks reasonable enough, while Swing Bill (10-3) and The Package (10-2) look to have nice racing weights, although they will need plenty above them to come out to get a run.”

A list of the topweights and our entries are as follows:

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Another day, another senseless whip ban.  I cannot believe that the Wolverhampton stewards dished out a ten day ban to Nicky McKay for excessive use aboard Stars In Your Eyes yesterday.  Personally, I think they should have given the jockey an award as the filly appeared to have no steering - he performed rare feats in getting her home in front by a nose.  She tried to hang off of the course and to my mind, McKay's efforts deserve ride of the week.

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J P McManus enjoyed another good win earlier in the week when winning the pro/am golfing championship at Pebble Beach with partner Padraig Harrington.  It must be a real thrill to play with golfers of the calibre of Harrington on some of the finest golf courses in the world.

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Unsurprisingly Mick McCarthy has been given the sack from his manager's job at Wolves.  What always amazes me is how the likeliest managers to fill the vacancy are all failed managers at other clubs.  It is a strange state of affairs - in football it seems that it doesn't matter what a terrible job you do, you always get a nice golden handshake and the likelihood of another crack of the whip at another club!

How can Glasgow Rangers go into administration?  When you think of Scottish Football there are only two teams that come to mind - Celtic and Rangers.  If a club the size of Rangers (with 54 League titles) are in trouble, it doesn't offer much hope to the smaller Scottish clubs.