Martial Law On Roodee

With the latest break from jump racing now upon us, we have four meetings on the flat to look forward to at Doncaster, Chester, Sandown and on the all-weather at Wolverhampton.  The stable has a runner, Martial Law on Chester's Roodee in the two mile handicap.  Our six year old doesn't know how to run a bad race and young Willy Twiston-Davies (who was in the saddle when he finished a good second at Ascot last time) takes a handy 7lbs off his back.  Even over two miles, the draw at Chester is important and a draw of five is not too bad so we will be hoping for the best at 3.20pm this afternoon.  The St Leger meeting continues at Doncaster and the highlight of the day is the Doncaster Cup, a race that Martin won with Far Cry in 1999 - there are three Group races up for grabs at the Yorkshire track this afternoon so it is a quality card.

Above: Ascot second Martial Law bids to go one better at Chester this afternoon

With the latest break from jump racing now upon us, we have four meetings on the flat to look forward to at Doncaster, Chester, Sandown and on the all-weather at Wolverhampton.  The stable has a runner, Martial Law on Chester's Roodee in the two mile handicap.  Our six year old doesn't know how to run a bad race and young Willy Twiston-Davies (who was in the saddle when he finished a good second at Ascot last time) takes a handy 7lbs off his back.  Even over two miles, the draw at Chester is important and a draw of five is not too bad so we will be hoping for the best at 3.20pm this afternoon.  The St Leger meeting continues at Doncaster and the highlight of the day is the Doncaster Cup, a race that Martin won with Far Cry in 1999 - there are three Group races up for grabs at the Yorkshire track this afternoon so it is a quality card.

I was amused by David's tweet yesterday on social networking website Twitter.  "After the latest confirmation stage for the Kerry National Premier Dane still has 9-10 to carry...Tom Scu still not eating!"  He made the Racing Post's Tweet Of The Day again and it is becoming something of a regular occurence!  You can follow David on Twitter by logging in (there is a link on the left-hand side of this page) and following @DavidPipeRacing.  Poor old Tom - it doesn't sound like he is going to be able to kick back and enjoy his break very much as it looks like he will be doing light in next Wednesday's big race at Listowel!

The Gold Cheongsam was the winner of Doncaster's £300,000 sales race for two year old's yesterday.  Jeremy Noseda's charge was the only filly in the race and landed the prize in a driving finish.  She cost £70,000 at the sales so has won considerably more than that with this win alone - I would imagine that the owner will be buying his bloodstock agent a drink or two!

*****

I see that there is to be another investigation into a snooker betting scandal.  Betting on the sport in the Middle East is big business, but it only takes a few surprise bets on match scores before alarm bells start ringing these days, like your £10 punters suddenly wanting a few hundred pounds on.  The bookmakers with all of their technology and failsafes will soon cry enough!

*****

I cannot believe that Ricky Hatton is considering making a comeback to boxing.  The problem when you retire from any walk of life, is finding enough interests to occupy your time and obviously Ricky hasn't been able to do that.  The trouble is that he took a good spanking in his last two fights and I think he should leave it at that.  To me, he always looked as though he was going to struggle with his weight and I can't see him competing at a level that I think he will be satisfied with.  Someone should have a word with him and talk him out of it - Ricky, you are only going to get hurt.