H'tingdon, Hereford Runners

There are five meetings taking place this afternoon with flat action from Leicestser, Newcastle and Wolverhampton, as well as a couple of jump meetings from Huntingdon and Hereford.  David has runners at both jumps cards today with Panic Attack and Nobel Joshua at Huntingdon and Collingwood Court at Hereford.  Panic Attack (pictured above) makes her seasonal debut in the mares' maiden hurdle at 12.30pm.  She was very impressive in landing a listed bumper at Market Rasen on soft ground on her debut and is certainly better than she was able to show in the Champion Bumper at the Cheltenham Festival last time.  She has schooled well at home and looks to have a great chance with Tom Scudamore in the saddle.  Vegas Blue looks to be the one to beat.

Nobel Joshua runs in the 3m1f handicap hurdle at 3.10pm.  We purchased him from the Doncaster Sales after he was a gutsy winner last time out at Clonmel under similar conditions.  He is 8lbs higher this afternoon, although conditional jockey Fergus Gillard takes a handy 7lbs off his back.  He is still unexposed over this sort of trip and he looks to hold solid each-way claims.

Over at Hereford Collingwood Court is our only runner in the 2m5½f handicap hurdle at 1.15pm.  He was running a much better race last time at Newton Abbot when falling at the last, but for which he would probably have finished fourth.  An opening mark of 94 looks no more than okay, although this longer trip should suit our former Irish point-to-point winner and he sports cheekpieces for the first time.  He should fare better now contesting handicaps rather than conditions events and David Noonan is in the saddle.

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The English Open snooker championships got underway at Milton Keynes yesterday afternoon and there were successes for several of the top seeds including Mark Selby, Neil Roberston, although world champion Ronnie O'Sullivan had a fight on his hands to beat world number 127 Brian Ochoiski.  There was a shock however when Stephen Maguire was beaten 4-1 by Sunny Akani.  The pick of today's action looks to be world championship runner-up Kyren Wilson versus Dominic Dale.

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I was driving this morning when I saw an AA van parked up. The driver was sobbing uncontrollably and looked miserable, I thought to myself, ‘that guy’s heading for a breakdown’.

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