Lady Lovely At Ffos Las!

It was another good weekend for the stable with the successes of Lady Of Longstone at Ffos Las on Saturday and Dell' Arca at Uttoxeter yesterday.  Lady Of Longstone prevailed in a thrilling finish to the mares' handicap hurdle fighting back to deny Midnight Sequel having been headed a furlong out under a strong ride from Tom Scudamore.  On Sunday Dell' Arca won his first chase on his third attempt over the larger obstacles at Uttoxeter.  He had previously run well in defeat when 1 1/2 lengths behind subsequent Gold Cup winner Coneygree, so he was fully entitled to win a race of this nature.  Still, it was good to see him jump well and I am sure David will place him to win many more over fences - he could be another one to run in France in the coming weeks.  The stable clearly continues in good form with decent performances too from the likes of Good Value (second) and Street Entertainer (third) over the weekend.

Although it is a Bank Holiday Monday there is only one jumps meeting taking place from Cartmel so unsurprisingly the stable has no runners this afternoon.  Even so, there is plenty of racing action to look forward to with flat cards from Carlisle, Leicester, Redcar and Windsor.

There were some fantastic performances on the level over the weekend - Aidan O'Brien landed an incredible tenth Irish  2,000 Guineas as Gleneagles supplemented his Newmarket success with a workmanlike victory under Ryan Moore.  He was nothing like as impressive as he had been at Newmarket, although the slower ground may have had something to do with that.  He remains very much the one to beat in the mile division.

What about Al Kazeem?  After being sent to stud at the end of 2013 he was found to be sub-fertile and returned to training.  Although a Group 3 winner last term and a Group 2 winner this, it is nonetheless and excellent training performance from Roger Charlton to record another Group 1 success with the now seven year old.

*****

It was a final game to forget for Liverpool legend Steven Gerrard despite scoring in his final Premier League match for the Scousers.  They were 5-0 behind by half time and eventually went on to lose 6-1.  They have some serious work to do in the off-season to get back on terms with the top teams.

*****

What an incredible finish to the Formula One race at Monaco yesterday.  Despite looking home for all money as he cruised to an easy victory around the streets of Monte Carlo a late crash from teenager Max Verstappen meant that a safety car had to be deployed and for some inexplicable reason, the Mercedes team thought it a good idea to bring Hamilton into the pits.  You can imagine my surprise when he emerged behind team mate Nico Rosberg and Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel.  Although Hamilton was clearly not amused, it was by far the most entertaining part of the entire weekend!  I'm sure his many millions will buy him plenty of drink to drown his sorrows in!

*****

It's a good job I managed to miss the Eurovision Song Contest over the weekend to avoid any further embarrassment about being a part of the United Kingdom.  I see that some of the press were referring to our entry as closely resembling the theme tune from the Benny Hill show.  In fairness they didn't finish last (24th of 27 entries) with a whopping 5 points!

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