Ces Sixth!

There are four meetings taking place this afternoon, although it is a blank day if you are a fan of the jumps - peculiar when you think that the traditional curtain-raiser to the core part of the season took place at Chepstow over the weekend.  The flat action today comes from Musselburgh, Windsor and Yarmouth on the turf and at Wolverhampton on the all-weather.  Unsurprisingly there are no runners from the Pond House team this afternoon.

Leoncavallo finished a very creditable sixth of 34 runners in the Cesarewitch at Newmarket on Saturday.  He was bang there all the way and looked likely to be involved in the finish, only weakening in the final half furlong to finish 9 lengths off the winner Great White Shark.  He was drawn very wide in stall 29 and therefore perhaps needed to do just a bit more than ideal early on in order to obtain a good position.  Nonetheless, this was a good run and our eight year old clearly remains in good form.  You can see him picture above, enjoying a well-earned pick of grass in one of the paddocks at Pond House.

Paricolor was sixth on his return to hurdling at Newton Abbot yesterday afternoon.  It was his first run back from a break and he performed well enough to suggest that he is capable of winning something similar.

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There was plenty of sporting history made yesterday with Rafa Nadal taking his 13th French Open title yesterday afternoon, beating Novak Djokovic in straight sets to draw level with Roger Federer's 20 Grand Slam victories - an incredible achivement.

Lewis Hamilton won the Eifel Grand Prix at the Nurburgring yesterday afternoon to land a record-equalling 91st race victory.  He was equalling Michael Schumacher's and was presented with one of the former seven-time champions old race helmets after the race by Michael's son Mick who is likely to be driving for Alfa Romeo next season.  Given the dominance of the Mercedes, it is surely only a matter of when rather than if Hamilton claims the outright record.

There were some upsets in the American football last night as the reigning champions and previously unbeaten Kansas City Chiefs were beaten at home by the Las Vegas Raiders.  Miami also produced something of a shock when pulverising last year's runner-up the San Francisco 49'ers.  Of course, you could rely on one thing - the Minnesota Vikings managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory...again!  They outplayed the unbeaten Seattle Seahawks for the vast majority of the game only to give up the game-winning touchdown with just 15 seconds left to play.  Disappointed doesn't come close!  That is the second time they have lost by one point to unbeaten opponents this season, but for which they would have a winning record themselves.  It just goes to show the fine margins between success and failure in top class sport.

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A man has been filmed on CCTV stealing police car tyres.  Police are working tirelessly to catch the thief!

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