Consigliere's Ayr Success

Unfortunately following yesterday's National Hunt fixture at Ayr, it is back to being a blank jumps day today, although we do have two all-weather flat meetings at Kempton and Lingfield to keep us entertained.  The stable has one runner, Purple 'N Gold who returns to the scene of his latest success in the 6.35pm race at Kempton tonight - he steps up a couple of furlongs in trip but shapes as though it shouldn't be a problem and he will be partnered by young Willy Twiston-Davies who takes a handy 5lbs off his back.

It was a mixed day for the yard at Ayr yesterday with Kings Palace a faller when just in front two out, while Top Wood narrowly failed to concede 12lbs to the winner of the handicap hurdle - the ground was very soft and he should be capable of going one better shortly.  Consigliere cannot have the ground soft enough and he produced a great performance under an excellent ride from 7lbs conditional jockey Kieron Edgar, indeed Kieron was flagged up for this effort in the Post...I bet he will be buying plenty of copies of the paper this morning!

You can see from the following pictures the scale of the task facing the lads to get the gallops ready for use in the mornings.  The snow covers have done a great job, but the six furlong stretch still has to be cleared of snow before the covers can be removed.

I see that Frankie Dettori was evicted from the Celebrity Big Brother house last night.  I would imagine that Frankie will be pleased to be out - he said that he wanted to see his family and judging by some of his house mates I can see why he would want to get out!

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The big sports news story of the day is that the England Ladies Netball team beat Australia in a series for the first time ever yesterday.  I wonder when their calendar will be coming out?!

I don't want to talk about football this morning as Arsenal had five lucky breakaways last night...I'm not bitter!

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I am reading a book about anti-gravity.  It's really good...I just can't put it down!