More Rain Incoming

        Not a Photo from this Morning!

There are two jumps meetings today at Doncaster and Warwick but the stable does not have any runners.  There are two all-weather cards at Southwell and Wolverhampton while in Ireland they just have a flat fixture at Dundalk.  The rain continues to fall at Pond House and we have had another 19mm of rain in the last 24 hours taking the total rainfall since Monday to 66mm with another wet day ahead for us and a lot of the country.  At the moment the winds are not too bad but I do believe they are set to get stronger over the course of the day so we will have to batten down the hatches!

It has already been a busy start to the morning with a new arrival coming off the lorry from Ireland just before 7.30am this morning.  She is a nice five year old bay mare by Dartmouth called 'Follow The Plan'.  She measures at 16.2hh and we have checked her microchip (we do this with every new arrival straight away) to make sure she is who she says she is on her passport which I am glad to see she is!  She weighs in at 504kg and so has a nice bit of size and scope and is for sale should anyone like any more details!  She has only had two starts in Irish point to points and finished a close third in the second on these in December and there was plenty to like about that performance.  She comes from the same place the Gentlemantoboot did and was recommended to us when the trainer visited us earlier this month.  She is not as expensive as it may appear so please do get in touch if you would like to find out more!  

There should be some good jumps action today at both meetings and Jack Tudor looks to have a good chance of riding a winner for Christian Williams.  House of Habsburg is favourite for the 3.47pm handicap chase having won his last start so hopefully he can follow up in this.  The final race on the Warwick card is a hunter chase and it looks extremely competitive.  The first three in the betting are trained by Dan Skelton, Ben Pauling and Paul Nicholls and are rated 137, 129 and 130.  While no-one is doing anything wrong and these trainers are entitled to train horses in hunter chases it doesn't quite sit right with me and this is why there seems less runners in the veterans chases.  This is not a new thing but, especially at this time of year you see professional trainers dominating these races as they try to qualify their horses for Cheltenham and Aintree.  I know they have introduced grass roots hunter chases as a different option - where horses have to have run in a point to point to be eligible to run in the hunter chase, I do think this should be the case for all hunter chases! Rant over and I expect the Skelton horse to win today's contest!

We had fully intended to run King Turgeon in the Great Yorkshire chase at Doncaster tomorrow but did not end up declaring him yesterday.  The ground was already softer that ideal and having just read the going description up there ahead of today's racing, there is now heavy places and so I am glad we decided not to run.  The horse is fine and we will wait for another day.

Last night there was a win for Aston Villa in Europe but Nottingham Forrest lost 1-0 away.  Carlos Alcaraz is through to the next round of the Australian Open tennis while Brit Cameron Norrie is in action this morning.  Rory McIlroy is a bit off the pace in Dubai Desert Classic but the second round is underway and he needs a good round today to get back in contention.

Eyelashes are supposed to prevent things from getting into your eyes, but whenever I have something in my eye it is always an eyelash.

Eyeronic!

Have a good Friday!