All Eyes on Leopardstown

 
   Fergus Gillard in action on the sand gallop

It is a quiet Sunday for the yard with no runners from Pond House but there is jumping action at Taunton and Musselburgh as well as another top class card at Leopardstown.  It is the Irish Gold Cup at 3.30pm and Kemboy is forecast favourite but has to bounce back from a below par effort on his return last time.  He faces tough opposition from Delta Work, Presenting Percy and Chris's Dream who all have top class form.  There is also one English challenger in the race - Le Bague Au Roi but she is one of the outsiders at about 25/1.  The race before is a top class novice chase where we see Faugheen in action and his main rival looks to be the Gordon Elliott trained Battleoverdoyen although it is a high class field all round.  There could be plenty of Cheltenham Festival pointers after a very interesting weekend of racing in Ireland.  There is likely to be runners at Fontwell from the yard on Monday so check back here for more news in the morning.

The sporting action starts early this morning where we have the Men's Australian Open Tennis Final which is live at 8.30am.  Seven time winner Novak Djokovic faces Dominic Thiem and while the Austrians turn of winning a Grand Slam should not be too far away I am not sure he can beat the Serb today.   I think Djokovic will win his 17th Grand Slam and eat further into the lead of the greats Federer (20) and Nadal (19).

France host England in the final game of the first weekend of the Six Nations tournament at 3pm this afternoon.  It is three years since England have won the Six Nations but I think this could be their year.  They played really well in the World Cup in Japan and the bookies have them as warm favourites.  In more local rugby news, Exeter Chiefs are at home to Harlequins this afternoon and Tom Wyatt is in the starting line up.  You may remember that Tom is the young son of Clare, who works here at Pond House so we will be cheering him on.  He has just signed a professional contract with the club and he looks to have a very bright future in the game.