Super Saturday

         Kingston Queen will not be
         running at Newbury Today

There is another super day of racing to look forward to today but it will be a little less interesting for us than it could have been as unfortunately Kingston Queen will not be running at Newbury today.  She was an intended runner and favourite for the opening Mares novices listed hurdle on the card at 11.55am but David was not 100% happy with her last night and decided to take her out.  She is a fantastic mare who we rate too highly to take a chance with if we don't think she is 100% and so the safest option is always to wait for another day.  It looks a very competitive race on paper with some high quality mares in the line up so it will still be an informative race to watch.  The favourite now is the Jamie Snowden trained La Conquiere who finished just in front of Kingston Queen in the Aintree bumper but there are plenty of opponents who could rank amongst the top in the mares division this season so I shall watch with interest.

Newbury is of course one of the headline meetings today with the December Gold Cup being the feature at 2.55pm and this looks a wide open 24 runner competitive affair.  Myretown is currently favourite for the Lucinda Russell, Michael Scudamore team and while I don't have a strong fancy, he would not be my pick in the race.  Willie Mullins has interesting runners in the field and I would not be surprised if this race was to go to him but I am not sure with which horse! 

Newcastle is another big meeting of the day and we have the Fighting Fifth hurdle to look forward to at 2pm.  There may be only five runners but all eyes will of course be on Constitution Hill and he faces a stern test in the shape of The New Lion and Anzadam.  The Henderson horses are in good form at the moment and I just hope we see the real Constitution Hill turn up and he has a safe round of jumping and we see a cracking race.  I am not sure is he is the winner for me, there has been much talk of Anzadam this week who has only had four starts in his life and has not been seen for 307 days but is unbeaten.  It will be great just to let the horses do the talking this afternoon and may the best horse win! 

As well as racing at Newbury and Newcastle over jumps there is also action at Bangor and Doncaster.  There is an all-weather flat card at Wolverhampton which gets underway at 4.30pm and in Ireland they race over jumps at Fairyhouse which has plenty of runners in all the races.

There is just one International rugby match today with Wales hosting South Africa at 3.10pm. There was a narrow win for Exeter last night away at Sale with the final score finishing 27-26.

There are five Premiership football matches today, no early kick offs but Everton play Newcastle in the tea time kick off at 5.30pm.  The evening games is Spurs at home to Fulham at 8pm.  

Eating too much cake is the sin of gluttony.

However, eating too much pie is okay because the Sin of Pi is 0.

Have a good Saturday!