A Bumper Day!

It's a busy day for the yard with runners at both jump meetings, Cartmel and Market Rasen.  Shoegazer, already a three time winner this season over fences reverts back to hurdles for birthday boy Wayne Clifford and it would be great if he could give him a birthday winner.  If you were thinking of attending the meeting at Cartmel I would suggest that you give yourself plenty of time as the traffic and parking around the course can get very tricky - even so, the place is well worth a visit.  Over at Market Rasen we have six runners, including Qulinton who is bidding to follow-up last year's Summer Plate success.  Our other runners are Raslan, Premier Dane, Katchmore, Street Entertainer and Woodlark Island.  Premier Dane, who has shown useful form in the past (notably when placed at the Cheltenham Festival) makes his debut for the yard today and I am looking forward to seeing how he gets on.

Above: Last year's Summer Plate hero Qulinton bids to follow-up this afternoon

It's a busy day for the yard with runners at both jump meetings, Cartmel and Market Rasen.  Shoegazer, already a three time winner this season over fences reverts back to hurdles for birthday boy Wayne Clifford and it would be great if he could give him a birthday winner.  If you were thinking of attending the meeting at Cartmel I would suggest that you give yourself plenty of time as the traffic and parking around the course can get very tricky - even so, the place is well worth a visit.  Over at Market Rasen we have six runners, including Qulinton who is bidding to follow-up last year's Summer Plate success.  Our other runners are Raslan, Premier Dane, Katchmore, Street Entertainer and Woodlark Island.  Premier Dane, who has shown useful form in the past (notably when placed at the Cheltenham Festival) makes his debut for the yard today and I am looking forward to seeing how he gets on.

It is a bumper day of racing action - as well as the two jump meetings, there are five meetings on the level at Ascot, Newmarket, Ripon, Haydock and Lingfield.  The highlight of the day is the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Diamond Stakes at Ascot and it looks like being a decent renewal with last year's winner Nathaniel being taken on by some high class opponents such as Sea Moon, St Nicholas Abbey, Dunaden and last year's Arc heroin Danedream.  It is a truly international affair with runners from France, Germany, Ireland and Japan taking on the home nation and with £1/2 million up for grabs it is hardly surprising!  With the Gosden team in such good form Nathaniel looks to be worth a bet at odds around 3/1.

At the Berkshire track yesterday, our sole runner Martial Law ran a blinder in the two mile handicap.  He was only beaten 1/2 length under apprentice jockey Willy Twiston-Davies and hopefully he can go one better before too long.  At 9/1 he was a decent each-way price, so hopefully owner Stuart Mercer had a few quid on and can now go and get himself a new tie!  Of course, I am only joking...those of you who have ever seen Stuart at the races will be know to you for his "vivid" dress sense!

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Tiger Woods holed out of the bunker on the 18th in the Open yesterday and he is still bang in contention to land another major championship.  He is only four shots off the lead following two rounds of 67 - he is hitting plenty of irons off the tee for position and looks to be in the right frame of mind to throw down a big challenge.  Plenty will depend on what the weather does when it's your tee time - on these coastal courses the elements can change in the blink of an eye.

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There will be plenty of traffic about today as the kids have broken-up from school for their six weeks holiday.  My wife is a school teacher so she will be looking for plenty of jobs for me to do...time to go to the bookies I think!