A Clean Sport

There is a busy day ahead with five meetings taking place.  There are jumps fixtures from Huntingdon and Sedgefield as well as all-weather flat fixtures from Southwell, Wolverhampton and Chelmsford City.  There are no runners from Pond House today although stable jockey Tom Scudamore makes the long journey to Sedgefield for just one outside ride.  I don't think I will be testing the one ride theory today.

If I asked you what sports would be top of the list for suspicious betting activity, I wonder what your response would be?  I thought that it may be snooker, darts or perhaps even horse racing but I would be wrong.  It turns out that tennis is the number one sport for this kind of racket (pardon the pun!) with 178 of 267 alerts reporting suspicious betting activity being linked with tennis.  52 instance related to football with 37 alerts making up every other sport collectively.  What a clean sport horse racing seems to be.

I was astonished to learn earlier in the week that the top rated two mile chaser in the country is no longer Champion Chaser Altior who is unbeaten in twelve starts.  Instead it is Cyrname who demolished his rivals at Ascot last weekend who now has a rating 3lbs superior.  Altior has continued to look nigh invincible this season and whilst Cyrname was undoubtedly impressive, I would rather see him produce another performance like that before conceding that he is the best around.

I was looking at the list of statistics for Frankel since he retired to stud.  His most expensive yearling has fetched £2,500,000, whilst his stud fee for 2019 is £175,000.  He has sired 138 winners worldwide and 36 Group or Listed winners in just six seasons at stud.  What an incredible racehorse he was and it seems that he is going to be just as successful as a stallion.

I am down in Rock in Cornwall as guest of old friends George and Angie Malde (think Bonanza Boy) and looking at the price of property down here you would need to be Frankel to be able to afford a place!

*****

Can February March? No, but April May...

Tweet