Return At Rasen!

The stable has one runner this afternoon as Diamond's Return (pictured above) bids to land a four-timer under Conor O'Farrell at Market Rasen.  Our eight year old rattled up a quick hat-trick over the space of ten days last month and while he is 21lbs higher than his initial success at Wincanton he still looks to be a worthy favourite.  Conor's dad owns the horse so they really are keeping it in the family!

There are five other meetings taking place this afternoon (all of them on the level) at Newmarket, Catterick, Goodwood, Doncaster and Bath.  The ground at Sandown yesterday turned heavy on the home bend, and it certainly had a dramatic effect on the sprint races with them ending up looking more like the finish to a three mile chase!  One who didn't mind the ground was Solemn who won by six lengths.  With more rain overnight I would imagine that the Esher course is going to be extremely testing all round today and it is hardly surprising - we have had 34mm overnight in the Westcounty (and that is equivalent to the amount of rainfall that we had in the last four weeks of May!).

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I hope A P has remembered that it is his wife Chanelle's birthday today and that he has at least remembered to get her a card.  Wives do tend to get very touchy if you forget (and I am speaking from experience!).  I don't suppose Chanelle would be too pleased about it appearing in the Racing Post either - I reckon it's nearly that time when all women seem to start counting backwards!  I am of course only joking, many happy returns Chanelle.

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It's the start of Euro 2012 tonight and the host nation Poland take on Greece.  There is definitely a good advantage to be had as the home nation and Poland at odds of around 21/20 look like being my first bet of these championships.

I do think that there will be quite a bit of crowd trouble during the tournament - the Dutch have already been on the receiving end of abusive chants in their training ground!  I wouldn't be at all surprised if you were to see players walking off - you would have thought that the officials would have realised before they awarded them the European Championships.