Monday March 28th 2022

Great shout!

Fabulous, Alan. Well done.

Well done Alan. Grateful if you could email me every day with your back up selection!

9/9. Come on Le Tueur, all the way from Fishguard.

Shame - beaten by a horse having its first win from 31. Still, good day for many hopefully.

@David Booo!! The winner was very well backed. Jonathan Haynes loves having winners at Hexham. Although he trains at Brampton, Cumbria, it's an easy whizz along the A69 to Hexham. Hidden Cargo was unlucky here the last meeting - he nearly fell at the water jump! Another fun fact: Hidden Cargo has been trained by Mickey Bowen as a pointer, and by his dad Peter, trainer of the beaten favourite! Small world.

That was close- just the 97 lenghts behind... hope tide times worked for EGS or somone. It was quite a low tide here at 9.0am

The Ludlow prize money is not that bad today, especially if you look at Saturday's Stratford card which had an average winner's prize of £3.67k, with four winners taking home less than 3k. An absolute disgrace for a midweek fixture, but for Saturday? If you remember it costs about 2k a month to have a horse in training (that's just for the basics) and then add say 500 to get it to the racecourse to run (entry fee, racing plates, transport costs, jockey fee), it makes it a pretty expensive hobby for the small owner. At the same time, a sunny Saturday will bring out the paying customers in their droves all hell bent on eating expensive food and downing overpriced booze. The end result is that racecourses have become "hospitality venues" with live sport thrown in. Ludlow is one of the more enterprising courses, which you can bracket with Market Rasen, Kelso and Perth; on the other side of the coin I would list Stratford, Worcester and Leicester.

When I first started going racing regularly the prize money for winning a maiden hurdle or bumper at Hexham was about £400. That is the equivalent to about £3,570 today (source: Bank of England inflation calculator). The winner of the Stratford bumper last Saturday took home the princely sum of £2,100.

@Harrytheactor Thanks for your thoughts Harry. I just can't see how the current system is sustainable. Either a new model of funding is developed or the sport needs to look at whether having 2 summer tracks like Stratford & Worcester is viable.

@tuforu are Coolmore ever any good in the States? I don't understand their reasoning to buy a Horse like that. Another Green Monkey. Their Stallion Roster in the States looks like a Real Madrid Galicticos line up right now.

Oh dear, that would be Suker, Seedorf, Luis Figo, Roberto Carlos, McManaman . . . Woodgate??

@el gran senor i wonder who are the actual LADS that AOB immediately rings.

That bletchley park run in st ANITA was for cat burger for him now i cant see him ever running again..