Feeling Hot

Temperatures are soring but racing is keeping the show on the road by making some subtle changes to look after horses and staff.  Yesterday the race times at Huntingdon were brought forwards to beat the worst of the heat and at Auteuil today they have also moved there timings to start much earlier this morning with racing than originally planned.  There is plenty of water, fans and people on hand to help cool the horses after the races and they are not being asked to be in the parade ring too long at Bath this afternoon with ice lollies available for the jockeys!  Lots of trainers will be travelling to the races earlier than they might normally so that the horses are not on the lorries in the main heat of the day.  As one trainer said however, it is not really the heat they mind, in fact they probably cope better than us but its acclimatizing to the weather which is the hardest part - the sudden rise in temperatures in recent days is what takes a bit of getting used to, it is the change in temperature rather than how hot is is that probably affects us all as we are not used to it.

Today there are four meetings on the flat at Redcar, Leicester, Bath and Lingfield.  There is one jumps meeting at Plumpton this evening and while the stable does not have any runners, Rian Corcoran is heading down there for one ride.  The meeting at Plumpton was an extra one put on and to be honest I am not sure it was worth putting on extra jumps cards at this time of year.  There are just 31 runners across the seven races, I'm guessing largely due to the ground and there probably was no need to have another meeting!  In Ireland they have a jumps meeting at Ballinrobe and and all-weather flat meeting at Dundalk.  They have plenty of jumps runners at Ballinrobe - less racing = more runners!  Top American golfer and Ryder Cup captain Jim Furyck was at Ballinrobe yesterday as a guest of JP McManus.  The Ryder Cup takes place at the JP owner Adare Manor in September 2027 and Jim will be back and forth to Ireland in the next 18 months to visit and play the golf course with the aim of picking his team to best suit the course and work out the tactics!  In an interview of Racing TV he mentioned JP had taken him to a hurling match the day before so he is definitely getting a taste of all JP's favourite sports!

No football today, but Notts County beat Salford in the play-off final at Wembley yesterday with David Beckham, Gary Neville and Paul Scholes all there to see their teams defeat.  We do have the French Open tennis to watch however and both of the Worlds number ones are in action today.  Aryna Sabalenka and Jannik Sinner both get their tournaments underway today and I think both will be very hard to beat and are the most likely winners in Paris in just under two weeks time.  

I opened a bag of frozen peas and a few rolled onto the floor...

Guess they were escapeas.

Have a good day and stay cool!