Newton Abbot Runners

  Best Nights runs at Newton Abbot Today

We have two runners at Newton Abbot this afternoon, Best Night and Saccary.  Best Night is making her hurdling and stable debut in the 3.13pm mares novices hurdle and Jack Tudor rides.  She has some good placed form on the flat in France up to 1m6f on varying ground and she has taken to jumping well.  She shows a great attitude at home and it will be interesting to see how she gets on.  This looks a competitive race and we are 16/1 in the betting so I think she has good each way value.  She carries the colours of the David Pipe racing club and lots of members will be there cheering her on so hopefully she can put on a bold show.

Saccary runs in the 3.48pm handicap hurdle over 2 miles and Jack is on board.  He as some good flat form in France and after over a year off he had three hurdle starts last season.  The ground then dried out too much before we got to run him again and this is is first start after a summer break.  He is likely to improve for his outing but it will be good to get him on the track and put in a good round that we can build on gong forwards this season.

Newton Abbot is the only jumps meeting today but there is plenty of flat racing as well.  Flat racing comes from Ayr, Newbury and Newcastle and in Ireland they have a jumps card at Downpatrick and a flat card at Dundalk.  

2006 Champion Hurdle winner Brace Inca has died at the age of 27 following colic.  He had a remarkable career, showing no form in his first four starts before progressing from a mark of 95 to be the champion that he was, rated 167.  He had epic battles with Hardy Eustace, Harchibald and Macs Joy and also won the Supreme novices hurdle in 2004 when edging out subsequent Gold Cup winner, War of Attrition.  Brave Inca won 15 of his 35 starts for trainer Colm Murphy and ten of those were Grade 1s.  He retired in 2009 and spent his retirement with Colm Murphy.

Last night in the Champions League football, Marcus Rashford scored his first goals for Barcelona to help them when 2-1 against Newcastle while Manchester City won 2-0 against Napoli.  

Keely Hodgkinson made a winning start in Tokyo yesterday in pursuit of a World 800m title, easily winning her heat and she has the semi-finals today.  We have a trio athletes in their respective 200m finals and heptathlete Katarina Johnson-Thompson starts her World title defence today.  You can follow all the action again on the BBC.

What has many keys bur can't open a single lock?

 Yesterday's Answer: a hole! (What gets bigger when more is taken away?) 

Happy Friday1

14:22 - Women's 200m - final