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Wednesday 29 June 2011

Apology

Well that looked a bit of a mess; will try and do better next time.

June 22nd. and 23rd.

Just a Class 5 six-furlong fillies handicap on the afternoon of the 22nd. but remarkable in the sense that the winner, second and fourth all lost ground at the start in one way or another.










On that basis it could be said that the third horse WHOATEALLTHEPIUS ran a good race against a pace bias. She did lead at quite a strong pace and kept on well when the fast finishers came after her.

On to the evening meeting at Bath for a Class 6 3-y-o handicap over just shy of a mile-and-a half and it was a case of "after you, Sir, no after you, Sir, I insist". The winner TANJUN AGAS ( trained by Roger Varian) and the second SEA THE FLAMES (Marcus Tregoning) both showed a reluctance to win but the latter's superior reluctance won. SEA THE FLAMES probably has the ability to win races, he made up a lot of ground in the last two furlongs, but the question is whether that potential will ever be realised. He raelly should have won this.

Over to Kempton for a seven furlong 2-y-o maiden, for which, PEARL MIX, was favourite at a shade of odds-on. This was the grey colt's second run, his first had been a very promising second to John Gosden's Main Focus over six furlongs of this same course a fortnight earlier. PEARL MIX justified the confidence and won by seven lengths after being well eased. He is in the right hands (Ralph Beckett) to follow up this win.


The following evening at Hamilton DOC HAY put in an impressive performance in the Class 5 handicap over five furlongs. The 4-y-o trained by Paul Cole until May of this year is now with the emerging talent of young Keith Dalgleish. His record since changing yards is two wins from three runs and with the turn of foot he exhibited year it would be surprising if there weren't more victories to come.



That's all for now folks.


Colin 




Tuesday 28 June 2011

An introspective retrospective on horse-racing

Hi! All.

The first post in what is, in all honesty, a therapeutic exercise for me.

I haven't been at all well for the last eighteen months, or so, and for twelve of those months I watched hardly any racing. This, after following the sport closely for half a century.

From the time of my retirement from full time employment I was a regular race-goer and for two years did a regular article for the monthly magazine RACING AHEAD.


Over the years I have been a regular visitor to various racing forums but I'm sorry to say these forums seem to be struggling to survive the challenge provided by sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

So I intend using this blog as an outlet for my thoughts, mainly racing orientated but other subjects might creep in, but definitely no religion or politics.

Recently I have struck up a friendship with an avid time-fiend and try to help him in his efforts to make a profit by watching recordings of races and assessing what sort of run (or trip for those America-orientated) a horse gets.

My thoughts are to post on here when I have noticed something worth remarking on.

As far as I am concerned it will not be a list of horses that should be supported in future races, one could, of course, if one wanted to, but my intention is to bring your attention to something that might not be obvious from reading the form book.

Most people who watch racing on terrestrial will have their own thoughts, so I will tend to concentrate on the lesser meetings, weekdays, evenings, you know the races I mean.

You'll probably find that I make comments about the rides the jockeys give a horse, I'll try not to make them all negative but even the negative comments might help in finding future winners.

I think that's enough for a first post don't want boredom to kick in too soon.

Colin