Out Of Luck At Hexham

There are five meetings taking place this afternoon with jumps cards from Uttoxeter and Worcester, flat fixtures from Bath and Hamilton and an all-weather card from Lingfield.  I know I keep on about it, but there is clearly something very wrong with race planning.  There is a 0-130 handicap at Uttoxeter that has attracted only three runners, whilst I feel really sorry for Worcester where they have laid on two 0-130's and 0-140 and been rewarded with fields of four, five and five.  It must make them want to tear their hair out, especially as if they had put on some 0-100 handicaps, they would probably have had maximum fields!

We were out of luck at Hexham last night with Mr Tambourine Man faring best of our two runners with fourth in the 2m4f handicap hurdle.  It was his first try at this longer trip and after looking like he was outpaced when the tempo lifted, he was staying on again in the closing stages to be beaten only eight lengths.  Miss M was disappointing in the 2m handicap, dropping out tamely at the bottom of the hill.  A winner twice last season, she is clearly capable of better than this, but she is back in one piece and that is the main thing.

I notice that the Irish flat handicappers are planning to drop almost all Irish horses by 2lbs 'to level the playing field'.  I remain baffled how there can be such a discrepancy, especially over the jumps.  You regularly hear of ex-Irish horses arriving on these shores and getting an additional 12lbs or more added to their rating (especially among the lower grade horses) to account for the discrepancy.  Yesterday, an additional 9lbs was not enough to stop Henry Sellers winning at Hexham.  The flat horses are going down, the jumps horses are going up...how can we be so far apart?

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Andy Murray has further stoked the fire about his US Open conqueror, Stefanos Tsitsipas' excessively long bathroom breaks.  Murray took to Twitter to imply that it took him twice as long to go to the bathroom as it did for Amazon owner Jeff Bazos to fly into space.  Sour grapes anyone?

British teenager Emma Raducanu, who became something of a household name due to her Wimbledon exploits is faring somewhat better than Murray, winning on her debut in her first match in the main draw.

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Where do you put naughty sheep?  Behind Ba-aa-aa-aa-aars!