6 Days To Go!

Only six more days until the Cheltenham Festival and we have a nice picture of some of our hopefuls to bring you.  Above is (front to back) The Liquidator, Knight Of Noir and Legacy Gold as they paraded around the yard on Saturday for The Morning Line.  There are three meetings taking place this afternoon - a jumps card at Catterick as well as two all-weather flat meetings at Lingfield and Kempton.  I would suspect that plenty of the all-weather nuts will be attending both meetings, although they will probably have to miss the last at Lingfield to do it...what a dilemma!  The stable has no runners this afternoon.

Only six more days until the Cheltenham Festival and we have a nice picture of some of our hopefuls to bring you.  Above is (front to back) The Liquidator, Knight Of Noir and Legacy Gold as they paraded around the yard on Saturday for The Morning Line.  There are three meetings taking place this afternoon - a jumps card at Catterick as well as two all-weather flat meetings at Lingfield and Kempton.  I would suspect that plenty of the all-weather nuts will be attending both meetings, although they will probably have to miss the last at Lingfield to do it...what a dilemma!  The stable has no runners this afternoon.

Sadly Massannie was not on her best behaviour yesterday and appeared to throw away what looked to be a winning opportunity.  She messed about at the start and then seemed to down tools halfway up the straight on the first circuit having taken the lead.  Even so, she still took up the running turning into the straight on the final circuit but was soon well headed - she consented to run on again between the last two flights of hurdles and stayed on strongly to finish second, beaten only 1 1/4 lengths...a most peculiar effort.  She clearly possesses tons of ability but seems to have a mind of her own - I will stop short of saying she's a typical woman...oh, too late!

I thought that Alderluck again ran well to finish third in the Devon National - his turn looks near, while Milor de la Borie still looked very inexperienced but ran creditably enough after an absence of 289 days when finishing third.

On the all-weather yesterday Stand Guard won his 25th race on the all-weather at Southwell and equalled the all-time record held by China Castle - an amazing performance.  It may only have been a seller but to get a horse to win all those races is a tremendous achievement.  There was no bid for the winner, although the runner-up Conducting was claimed for £5,500!  Jim Best took that one on and I would imagine that he will be placing him to win a seller very soon.

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On the Cheltenham front I see that Nicky Henderson's Champion Hurdle hope My Tent Or Yours is drifting in the betting after an injury scare.  The trainer says he should still make the race, although I don't like it when they drift in the market...there is usually a reason for it.  Having said all that, Binocular made a Lazarus like recovery to land the race for the trainer in 2010.

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I thoroughly enjoyed the Adrian Maguire article on page 4 of today's Racing Post.  He recalls winning the Kim Muir at Cheltenham in 1991 aboard MCP's Omerta.  The former jockey says that he remembers Martin Pipe saying to the owner 'Is this lad any good?'.  He also says that Make A Stand was the best performance he had ever seen - especially as he rode the horse at the end of 1996 and he certainly didn't feel like a Champion Hurdle horse...another one that Martin certainly improved!

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England manager Roy Hodgson faces a dilemma tonight - do you go for experience or youth as they take on Denmark in an International Friendly?  Surely he knows how good Ashley Cole is - the trouble is that Cole can't even get into the Chelsea team at present!

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Finally, don't forget to check David's blog which features an exclusive interview with Mike Vince as the build-up to Cheltenham reaches it's climax.  We have a number of video interviews to bring you over the coming days, including with jockey's Tom Scudamore and Conor O'Farrell that will be featured on these pages - so do keep checking back with us

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