Four Runners At Newbury

Today the stable has four runners at Newbury.  Arrayan, Dream Esteem (pictured winning at Chepstow last time) and Midnight Tuesday are joined by stable debutant Goulanes.  Goulanes was a winner of an Irish point-to-point and could be interesting, while young Tom Bellamy comes in for the ride aboard Midnight Tuesday in the hands and heels novices' handicap hurdle for conditional and amateur jockeys.

There is an interesting piece in today's Racing Post about Racing's Top Tweeters and I see that David has made it into the top ten with an impressive 21,500 followers - that's more than the population of Barnstaple (a town of fairly significant size in North Devon), or getting on for the population of the country of San Marino!  Just imagine the entire population of a large town or small country taking an interest in what you do...mindblowing!  Michael Owen tops the table with just under 1.2 million followers, although I would suggest that that figure is more to do with his Manchester United footballing expoits than his racing interests.  The first "proper" racing personality is A P McCoy with just under 116,000 followers - that is almost the entire population of Watford!  Personally I don't Twitter, although I'm sure that many of you will disagree!

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There were plenty of non-runners at Fontwell yesterday afternoon and I would imagine that was largely due to the drying ground.  The going officially ended up with good/firm places, and unless we get some rain in the next few days, I would imagine we will see plenty more trainers withdrawing their runners.  Let's hope that thte ground is not too fast for Aintree.

Talking of the Grand National meeting, it looks as though it will decide the fate of the trainers championship this season.  The Henderson/Nicolls showdown will certainly add to the excitement of the meeting and at the moment I would say that the advantage lies with Henderson.  His team are in good form and he would appear to have the stronger team lined up for Aintree with the likes of Sprinter Sacre, Finian's Rainbow and Simonsig among them.  Mind you, a Grand National winner would swing the verdict one way or the other with one fell swoop.