Saturday's Meetings Lingfield A/W 8 Races 11:55-3:57p.m. Navan N/H 7 Races 12:00-3:27p.m. Southwell A/W 6 Races 12:50-3:45p.m. Wolverhampton(E) A/W 8 Races 5:00-8:30p.m. Ascot Abandoned Haydock Abandoned Taunton Abandoned Racecards At The Races Sporting Life Racing Post Good Luck
Taunton abandoned. Haydock on a knife edge: ‘It all depends on what happens overnight. The Met Office say it will get down to -2C, which would mean we're in trouble, but John Kettley says it will be just below zero, which we could sustain."
I see a large turnout from across the water coming for the upcoming Dublin Racing festival with 1 in every 5 tickets sold being bought in Britain, then hot on the heels of this, Nicholas Henderson stating Cheltenham is no longer the be all and end all anymore. Is the change beginning?
Hopefully. I love the DRF - the only thing I think needs improving is the fact that the TV coverage doesn't seem to capture the noise of the crowd so it can come across as lacking emotion. I would think that is fairly easy to solve? I'm sure there is always a cracking atmosphere but it doesn't come across on TV? You never hear roars in the last couple of furlongs like you do in this classic:
Depends on how many tickets have been sold, but could it not be an indication of how poorly Irish racing is followed compared to British jumps racing? I expect we will see more people at Cheltenham next Saturday than we will for the DRF.
Very small field, but will take a chance with the Swiss Spirit gelding, Intervention, in the 14:35 at Southwell over a distance of 6f on the Tapeta surface. Not a great fan of 'Frank' but JPS seems to do fairly well at Southwell, as do the Mick Appleby yard. 9/2 best price at time of writing, readily-available. Best of luck today folks, lucky to have any racing at all, I guess?
Rough start to the day at Navan - crashing falls for Davy Russell and Rachael Blackmore and Internet broke down
Yeah, great pricing alright, hard to beat that. Likely Cheltenham will always be the one but it's becoming so diluted now and we are seeing increasing long odds on favourites in big races each year, which is making the competitiveness of it all a bit dull. Not long ago if you got a horse trading at Evens it was a shock at Cheltenham, now it's an ever increasing number of certainties just having to turn up.
Well it makes sense if you've got 60 odd million, that your attendance is going to be greater than that of a country with 5 odd million.
Hard to beat that atmosphere at Cheltenham, surely unrivalled in the racing world I would think. A lot of it can be down to good mic placement as I often hear massive roars and cheers at the likes of Limerick and there would only be 2 or 3 thousand there.
It depends on how popular the sport is in a country of 60 million versus 5 million doesn't it? Racing in Ireland seems to be poorly supported as a spectator event, host that event at any decent UK course and you'd be getting 30k+ crowds per day.