Big Day At Sandown

It looks like being a great day's racing action on the final weekend before the Cheltenham Festival with four meetings - three over the sticks at Ayr, Sandown and Chepstow as well as an all-weather flat meeting at Wolverhampton.  At Sandown the centrepiece is the Imperial Cup, a race the stable has won on numerous occasions, including most recently with Gaspara and Ashkazar.  Tanerko Emery (pictured above) and Kazlian represent the stable in the big one today and will be ridden by Kieron Edgar and Tom Scudamore respectively, while Edmund Kean takes in the valuable EBF Final earlier in the afternoon.

David ended the speculation surrounding one of his entries, Ballynagour at next week's Festival by confirming that he will run in the Byrne Group Plate, a race the stable won last year with Salut Flo and in 2010 with Great Endeavour.

Who is Mick Fitzgerald's scriptwriter?  The former jockey turned pundit said at a South London Festival Preview, "For those of you who travel Ryanair, you'll know that he doesn't give too much away!"  Fitz was another to fo nap on Dynaste for next week - let's hope he is right.

We have had plenty of rain down here in Devon over the last couple of days and I just hope that Cheltenham spare the track the artificial watering.  Just think, if you have a good ground horse your chances could well be scuppered by a hosepipe!

There is a bit of a change to the norm at Wolverhampton tonight as legenday arrowsmiths Keith Deller and Eric Bristow are at the track.  Keith Deller visited the yard a number of years ago and is keen on his horses.  Talking of darts players, I once knew a darts player who scored 1001 with one throw...he threw a hedgehog at the board!  The old ones are the best...

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I will be having a cheeky little treble on Everton (4/9), Celtic (4/9) and Partick (1/3) to put the bread on the Barnes table this weekend.