Rose To Bloom In Final?

There are five meetings taking place this afternoon with jumps action from Sandown, Wincanton and Newcastle as well as all-weather flat fixtures from Lingfield and Kempton so if you are living in the London area you are in luck, you have the choice of three meetings!  I wonder how race planning go about their job sometimes.  Anyway, I digress...David has one runner this afternoon as Rathlin Rose contests the very valuable veterans' final at Sandown at 3pm.  With £100,000 in total prize money it has attracted a 17 runner field - that is over twice as many as any other race on the card and shows that there is a real market for these OAP's.  Rathlin Rose was fourth on his reappearance run and is a couple of pounds lower today.  He loves Sandown and has a good turn of foot.  The only thing I would say is that he may prefer the ground a bit more testing.  Nevertheless, a big run is expected under Tom Scudamore.  Tom has also picked up a few nice outside rides so he could be among the winners.

It will be interesting to see how star mare Laurina gets on at Sandown this afternoon.  She is second favourite in ante-post markets for the Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham in March so she should be a good thing today.  There are only four runners and none of us are going to get very rich backing her at 1/7!

Today's Scoop6 could be worth £2 million but organisers are going to make you work for it...as well as the seventeen runner veterans' race, there are two big handicaps from Cork!

I saw that champion apprentice jockey Jason Watson took a nasty fall on the all-weather at Kempton.  He was fired into the polytrack after his mount clipped the heels of another runner.  They were going very quick and there is little give in the all-weather surface.  He was taken to hospital for further assessments.  Let's hope that he is okay.

It is presenter Alice Plunkett's 46th birthday today.  Alice is a lovely lady and I once caught a glimpse of her walking around Martin's kitchen in her underwear.  No, there was nothing dodgy going on - she was participating in a photo shoot for a clothing magazine.  Happy days!  Anyway, I was a little distracted (can't think why!) many happy returns Alice...

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It is the third round of the FA Cup today and as you can imagine, a number of the Premier League sides are long odds-on to win.  I am going to have a wager on my beloved West Ham at 1/2 and Middlesbro at 4/7.  Manchester United will continue their winning streak at home to Reading but at least the away side will earn a few quid with a capacity crowd of nearly 75,000 looking on.

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What do you give a sick car?  A fuel injection!  Have a great weekend...

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