Four Runners Today

           Volt Face on the Gallops

There are four meetings on today, three jumps cards at Sandown, Wincanton and Newcastle plus a flat card at Lingfield.  David runs Volt Face in the 2.40pm at Wincantonn with Kieron Edgar on board taking off a handy five pounds.  He ran well on his seasonal reappearance at Towcester to finish third and had he not stumbled at the last hurdle he might have won.  This is a more competitive race but it will be interesting to see how he gets on.  At Sandown David runs Classical Art and Rathealy in the juvenile hurdle and Balgarry in the 3.00pm handicap hurdle.  Tom Scu rides Classical Art and Balgarry while young Michael Heard is on Rathealy.  Balgarry is having only his of his life and it is just great to have him back on the track again.  He ran okay last time in the competitive Ladbroke hurdle at Ascot and hopefully he can build on that and run a nice race this afternoon.  Classical Art ran well on this course on his hurdling debut and finished fifth up at Wetherby last week.  Rathealy was a good second on his hurdling debut at Plumpton before a costly mistake at Warwick last time ended any chance he had.

The Peter Bowen yard is flying at the moment and his son Sean Bowen also seems to be riding winners every day.  He has now moved onto the 27 winner mark for the season and he already looks like a future champion jockey.  David is on the 71 winner mark for the season which is leading total number of winner for trainers, four more than Paul Nicholls!

If you are going to Sandown today there is a problem with the trains due to engineering works, where have we heard that before!  I see that a lot of people are moaning about there only being four runners in the Tolworth hurdle.  There is good prize money on offer with £22,000 to the winner and even if you finish last you take home over £2,000 in prize money which is more than you get for winning some all-weather flat races!  If trainers don't support these races they will change the conditions of the race and we will lose them.  Come on trainers!

It is the FA Cup football today so I wonder how many upsets there will be?!  There looks to be some bets today with Villa at 4/9, QPR 6/4, Southampton 4/9, Sunderland 6/10 and Wycombe 4/1.  I am going to have a five team roll up.

Finally I would like to wish secretary Gail Harrison a very Happy Birthday for today.  Gail has worked at Pond House for over 30 years - she is a saint!  She doesn't like celebrating birthdays's so I will be gentlemanly and I won't disclose her age!  Have a good day.