Blank At Fontwell

A foggy start to the morning in the west country.  There are four meetings taking place this afternoon with jumps cards from Perth and Newton Abbot, a flat fixture from Brighton and an all-weather flat meeting from Newcastle.  The prevailing fast ground has obviously taken it's toll on the number of runners at any of the turf meetings with only one field in double figures.  There are no runners from the Pond House team today.  Indeed, our next runners will not come until Wednesday at the earliest, with declarations for those made this morning at 10am.

There was no joy for the stable yesterday at Fontwell with Oneonechop third in the juvenile hurdle and Iron Heart fifth in the handicap hurdle.  Oneonechop has had a very busy time of it and he did not jump as fluently as he can, failing to improve on his second in handicap company on his previous outing.  He is better than this and we will continue to look for suitable opportunities for him.

Iron Heart travelled nicely for much of the way in the handicap hurdle but his chance was not helped with a blunder two from home.

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England were convincing 4-0 winners over Andorra yesterday at Wembley in their World Cup qualifier.  The hosts extended their record in the group to five out of five and already look to have one foot in the next stage.  There was a win too for Wales who beat Belarus 3-2.

Max Verstappen was a convincing winner of his home Grand Prix at Zandvoort in the Netherlands yesterday, beating Lewis Hamilton and in the process re-taking the lead of the world championship.  The next race at Monza could not be more different than this twisty track and is likely to be more suited to the Mercedes so things could quickly swing back in the other direction.

England's cricketers face a big run chase on the final day of the fourth test against India.  The visitors made 466 all out in their second innings to lead by 367 runs.  By the close of play England had reached 77-0 meaning that they need 291 runs today to win.  It is a tall order and would be an English record, but it is by no means out of the question - let's hope they can do it.

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I used to have an irrational fear of speed bumps, but I am slowly getting over it!