Siruh's Seasonal Debut

There are four meetings taking place this afternoon with flat cards from Nottingham and Bath, an all-weather flat fixture from Kempton and a jumps card from Wetherby.  David has one runner today as former Cheltenham Festival winning chaser Siruh du Lac (pictured above) makes his seasonal debut in the 2m3½f novices hurdle at Wetherby at 2.48pm.  It is his first run for almost a year and his first over timber since January 2017.  He is a high class horse and this looks like a nice opportunity for his first start of the season with bigger targets lying ahead.  There are a couple of decent prospects in opposition, but he should be thereabouts under Tom Scudamore.

The race for the 2021 flat jockeys' championship hotted up yesterday with a treble from Wililam Buick at Leicester yesterday cutting the gap to reigning champion and championship leader, Oisin Murphy to four.  With the season finishing (for championship purposes) this weekend at Ascot on Champions' Day, it could be a thrilling finish with Buick looking for a first title and Murphy chasing his third.

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There wasn't much to shout about last night for the home nations in the World Cup qualifying with England managing only to scrape a 1-1 draw with Hungary at Wembley last night.  They are still well in control of their group, but they will certainly need to play a lot better going forward.  The same comments apply to Scotland, who barely managed to beat the Faroe Islands 1-0, whilst Northern Ireland lost 2-1 to Bulgaria.

Andy Murray lost in the third round of the Indian Wells tournament to Alexander Zverev yesterday, despite playing well and immediately ruled himself out of next month's Davis Cup tournament.  It is a shame as Murray almost single-handedly won Britain the title in 2015, scoring 11 of the team's 12 points as they landed the title for the first time in 79 years.  Of course, he is not the same player these days and is currently ranked 121st in the world.

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My dog only responds to commands in Spanish...he’s Espanyol.