Highly Emotional

There are no jumps meetings in the UK today but there are flat meetings at Pontefract, Yarmouth, Ayr, and Chelmsford.  In Ireland there are two meetings, a flat card at Naas and a jumps card at Tramore.  David does not have any runners today but we do have 48 hour declarations for racing at Newton Abbot on Saturday.  Midnight Magic is our only potential runner and he may look to follow up his recent course and distance success.  While we have been enjoying the recent sunshine and warm weather this of course has meant that the ground has been drying out at racecourses across the country.  This is part of the reason the stable does not have many entries at the moment but also we have recently vaccinated the majority of our horses so we are allowing them time to get over this.  It also then means that as soon as we get some rain we have a strong team of horses ready to go in the next 2-3 weeks.

It was a highly emotional day in the racing world yesterday as the news broke of the passing of former Irish Champion jockey Pat Smullen at the age of just 43 from pancreatic cancer.  While I did not know Pat personally I watched, read and listened to the many heartfelt tributes to him and I felt very emotional as it was clear from what his friends, colleagues and family said about him what a wonderful man he was.  A Tweet from his eldest daughter Hannah simply read "My Hero" was probably the most poignant of them all.

In other news yesterday it was good to hear that Warwick have been given the go ahead to host a pilot event at their upcoming jumps meeting on Monday.  They are allowed to race with a crowd capacity of 474 people on course.  There will be no tickets available to the general public but it is at least a tiny step in the right direction and fingers crossed it will all go well.  The numbers are likely to be made up of about 150 annual members, 124 hospitality guests and up to 200 owners in addition to participants and race day staff.  The following week there will hopefully be up to 1,000 people pilot at Newmarket for their Cambridgeshire meeting.

I enjoyed watching a nail biting game of cricket last night as Australia just beat England in the final over of the One Day International at Old Trafford.  It came down to the wire and meant England lost a One Day International Series at home for the first time in the last five years.  I have really enjoyed watching the recent games between England and Australia in recent weeks and there has really not been much between the two sides.

 Why did the fish blush?  Because it saw the Ocean's bottom!  Have a nice day.