Queens Exeter Success

There was a great win for Queens Cave (pictured above) at Exeter yesterday afternoon when she ran out a convincing winner of the mares' novices hurdle to brighten a dark and dingy day.  An excellent second after a lay-off last time, it is great to see her back in the winners' enclosure.  She is a lovely mare and hopefully she can go on to better things from here.  Nordic Combined ran another solid race to finish third in the handicap hurdle and it is surely only a matter of time before he gets his head in front.  Mrs Miggins finished fourth in the conditional jockeys' handicap hurdle which was a creditable effort considering they were racing from a long way out.  Midnight Magic was still in with every chance when falling at the penultimate fence and he seemed to be handling the soft ground just fine, so that will open up more opportunities for him.

There are three meetings taking place this afternoon with the action coming over the jumps from Ludlow, Taunton and Sedgefield.  David has two runners at Taunton; Huccaby and Dusky Hercules.  Huccaby contests the 2m maiden hurdle at 2.00pm.  He is yet to reach the frame in four starts and would need to improve on what he has shown thus far to figure.  He is still a very raw and inexperienced four year old who will improve with experience and will be better served by handicap company.  David Noonan rides.  Our other runner is Dusky Hercules who runs in the 2m handicap hurdle at 4.10pm.  He ran with promise over course and distance last time and will be suited by any further rain but this does look like a tough assignment with some promising youngsters in opposition.  Tom Scudamore is in the saddle.  Miss Tynte is a non-runner in the 4.00pm at Ludlow.

Talking of Dusky Hercules, he is the first runner for David's new Racing Club and it is great to see the Pipe/Scudamore colours resurrected and back on the course.  David has four horses in the Club at present with plans to expand that number as membership increases.  It is only £100 per year and offers the chance to get involved in the sport at only a fraction of the cost.  Membership would make an ideal birthday or Christmas present for the racing enthusiast in your life.  Click here for further details.

I see that there is a 3pm inspection at Cheltenham this afternoon ahead of the start of their three day November meeting which gets underway tomorrow.  The going is already very testing (soft, heavy in places) and with rain in the forecast and some snow in the area, course officials have decided to take a look.  Hopefully it will go ahead without any problems.

The Tote have decided to revive the old Ten To Follow competition and I reckon that is a great result for racing.  It was wildly popular back in it's previous carnation and can only be a good thing in helping to engage the younger generations.

There is a picture of a horse on page 9 of the Racing Post in their 'Horse Play' section today.  The clue to guessing who the picture is of is that he was a dual winner of the BetVictor Gold Cup for Martin Pipe.  The answer is of course, the extremely talented and popular Cyfor Malta.  Now 26 years old, he is still looking fantastic and enjoying his retirement near the yard where he is looked after by Dennis, Norma and Martin.

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England take on Montenegro in their Euro football qualifier tonight.  The Three Lions need only one point to secure their place in the Euro 2020 competition and are massive odds-on to win tonight.

Ronnie O'Sullivan looked to be back in imperious form yesterday as he opened his Northern Ireland Open campaign with victory.  The Rocket knocked in breaks of 84, 101, 95 and 54 to progress to the next round.  Judd Trump, finalist in the Champion of Champions tournament won his first round match to go through, whilst former World Champion Mark Selby also won.

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I tried to de-ice my car this morning using my Tesco clubcard.  Unfortunately I could only get 10% off!

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