Shoe's Chase Debut

There is plenty of racing action on this afternoon with flat cards at Musselburgh, Lingfield and Brighton and a jumps card at Hereford.  The stable has a runner at Hereford as 137-rated hurdler Shoegazer contests his first start over the larger obstacles in the novices' chase.  He has schooled well at home and let's hope that he provides a nice winner for our stable sponsors Wayne and Sarah Clifford of Bathwick Tyres.

Recent Chepstow scorer Shoegazer makes his chasing debut at Hereford

There is plenty of racing action on this afternoon with flat cards at Musselburgh, Lingfield and Brighton and a jumps card at Hereford.  The stable has a runner at Hereford as 137-rated hurdler Shoegazer contests his first start over the larger obstacles in the novices' chase.  He has schooled well at home and let's hope that he provides a nice winner for our stable sponsors Wayne and Sarah Clifford of Bathwick Tyres.

Tom Scudamore was on the mark yesterday with a winner at Southwell for his brother Michael.  Most of the horses seemed to finish very tired, but Aramun battled on gamely on the very soft ground.  A P McCoy was also among the winners as he drove Wild Rhubarb to victory - it wasn't the strongest of races, but I wouldn't be at all surprised to see this one placed to follow-up shortly.

It was a good effort by Kempton to host Ascot's abandoned meeting yesterday and they were rewarded with a crowd of over 3,000 people turning up to enjoy the high class action.  I am sure the free admission had something to do with it, but it was certainly a good public relations exercise for the course.

I see that the BHA have decided to blame all of the jockeys for the start of this year's Grand National.  Remember, it took three attempts to finally get the race underway - I think that apportioning the blame solely on the riders is a bit harsh, afterall only in this country could we have such an antiquated starting system to start the world's greatest steeplechase.  Personally, I think if they are going to continue to use the old rubber band, then the course needs to have another line further back from the tape (say 50 yards or so) and then get the runners and riders to walk in sensibly from there.  Obviously all of the jockeys are going to want to get a good start as they certainly won't want to have to go back and explain to their trainer why they were left behind at the start!

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There was a good win for Newcastle last night as they beat Chelsea 2-0 with a wonder goal from Cisse.  Don't forget Manchester City are going to need to beat Newcastle so the Premiership may not be over just yet!  Spurs also produced a good performance to beat Bolton 4-1 away from home.  Since Harry hasn't been awarded the England job, Tottenham have started winning again - I wonder if this is just a coincidence?!