Testing Ground

Weather permitting there should be three meetings taking place this afternoon, with two on the flat at Folkestone and Beverley and a jumps card at Newton Abbot.  Folkestone are planning an inspection at 10am as there are heavy showers forecast and the prospects of racing going ahead are no better than 50/50 at present, so make sure you check that it goes ahead before you leave if you are planning a trip to the races this aftenoon.  The ground at Newton Abbot has come up very testing and as such we will not be having any runners this afternoon.  The good news is that Newton Abbot have once again put up some decent prize money - they are offering the same amount of money as Beverley and £8,000 more than Folkestone...four of the races at Folkestone are worth only £1704.25 to the winner which I think is an absolute disgrace.  The trouble is, so long as the owners and trainers keep running for peanuts, the courses will continue to offer poor prize money.

I see that there is talk about Chester holding jump racing - there is a schooling session proposed for Monday and local trainer Donald McCain will send some of his horses to the track.  It should be interesting as the bends are very tight, in fact the track is on the turn the whole time - you wouldn't want to be riding a horse that jumps right-handed!  It would certainly be very exciting and I for one, am all for it.

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We have the Capital One Cup third round coming up tonight.  The problem with having a bet in these sort of Cup competitions is that a lot of the Premier League teams will play their youngsters or fringe players.  Having said all of that,  Manchester City's fringe players would get in most first teams!  I will be having a cheeky double on Southampton at 4/5 and Norwich tomorrow at 4/7.

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The Ryder Cup starts on Friday in Chicago and I see that the Europeans are drifting in the betting.  We are now out to 17/10 and it looks as though it is going to be very difficult to win even though we currently have four of the five best players in the world.  We need some of our lesser-known players like Molinari, Kaymer, Colsaerts and Hanson to rise to the big occasion.