Five Runners At Wincanton

The stable has five runners this afternoon at Wincanton, Wings Of Icarus, Qalinas, Shallow Bay, Woodlark Island and Kilrye.  Qalinas is having his first run in 368 days, but he did have some good placed form in the book, including when runner-up at Sandown, while Woodlark Island returns to the West country track where he was a course and distance winner in 2010.  Timmy Murphy takes the ride on Wings Of Icarus for Shirl and the girls, Conor O'Farrell is aboard Shallow Bay and stable jockey Tom Scudamore rides the remainder.

Course winner Woodlark Island is among our runners at Wincanton this afternoon

The stable has five runners this afternoon at Wincanton, Wings Of Icarus, Qalinas, Shallow Bay, Woodlark Island and Kilrye.  Qalinas is having his first run in 368 days, but he did have some good placed form in the book, including when runner-up at Sandown, while Woodlark Island returns to the West country track where he was a course and distance winner in 2010.  Timmy Murphy takes the ride on Wings Of Icarus for Shirl and the girls, Conor O'Farrell is aboard Shallow Bay and stable jockey Tom Scudamore rides the remainder.

We only had a couple of runners yesterday and I thought they performed okay on what looked pretty testing ground.  Ms Cordelia shaped well on her Pond House and hurdles debut in the mares' novices' hurdle when finishing runner-up.  She jumped and travelled well and finished clear of the third home - she looks for all the world as though she will appreciate better ground and looks like a winner waiting to happen.

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You will see below a video of Salut Flo working exuberantly on the Pond House gallops this morning in the hands of amateur jockey Mikey Ennis.  Salut Flo has a raft of entries at next week's Cheltenham Festival over both hurdles and fences.  He is in the Byrne Group Chase (a race that David won in 2010 with Great Endeavour), as well as the County Hurdle, Martin Pipe Conditional Jockeys' Handicap Hurdle and the Grand Annual Handicap Chase.  He was in the process of running a big race in a valuable handicap at Cheltenham in December when a terrible mistake 3 out knocked him out of contention.  As you can see he is clearly in good order as he continues his preparation towards the Festival.

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I see that the groundstaff at Cheltenham put seventeen millimeters of water on the course yesterday.  The pressure on these guys to get the ground right must be immense and I wouldn't want their jobs right now.  The problem is the drying winds are keeping the ground on the fast side of good and it could quite easily turn up really fast ground on the opening day - I bet there would be some shock results then.  Having said that, if there is significant rain between now and then it could produce false patches of ground - getting that balance must be a nightmare!

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What about Barcelona beating Bayern Leverkusen 7-1 last night?  Messi scored an incredible five goals - something that has never been done before in teh Champions' League.  Barcelona won 10-2 on aggregate and they look sure to continue to take the world of beating.

Spurs had a scare when they were 1-0 down to Stevenage but came through to win 3-1 in the end.