Juddmonte 1-2 For Cecil

I thought that Bathwick Quest posted a fair effort when finishing runner-up at Hereford yesterday evening under Tom Scudamore in the novices' handicap chase.  She jumped well and made a valiant attempt to make all the running but in the end finished second to Numen.  She could probably do with a little bit of help from the handicapper, although having said that, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the winner follow-up under a penalty before the assessor gets a chance to revise his rating.

Talking of Tom Scu, he spoke with Mike Vince at our recent Garden Party and you can hear of his hopes for the coming season by coming back here tomorrow.

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The feature race of the day, The Juddmonte International took place at York and it witnessed a great training performance from Sir Henry Cecil, who was responsible for Twice Over and Midday, who finished first and second.  Both horses were owned by Prince Khalid Abdullah, who also happens to own Juddmonte so he was winning his own money back - that will certainly help with the training fees!  The result means that Sir Henry now lies second in the flat trainers championship (some £200,000 behind Richard Hannon), but the extraordinary statistic is that he has done it with 705 fewer runners!

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You would be pretty disappointed to pay 200,000 guineas for a horse, only for it to finish second in a modest handicap at Carlisle.  Well, that is what happened when 6/5 favourite Present Danger was turned over yesterday - to make matters worse, the trainer of the winner then chipped in to say that he only paid 3,500 guineas for his!

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The final Test match between England and India starts today at The Oval.  Let's hope that the real Indian team turns up to make it a contest - in the three matches that have taken place so far, they have looked as though they would much rather be back home.  The 6/4 on offer about England could look quite generous.