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Captain's Blog - 22nd March 2011

I will be back in the office today after a few days off to recover from the National Hunt Festival. We will be covering one meeting which comes from Kempton Park where jumping is the name of the game. Lorna Fowler and Johnathan Neesom will take you through all the action and will be telling us about their Festival highlights as well. It should be a good show so please join us from 1.30pm.

No joy with our selection yesterday and I need to be careful not to bask in the comfort zone of Cheltenham profit, instead I need to get my head down and supplement the good work done there with a few more winners this month. I am looking forward to the start of the flat season and in truth the golden numbers work an awful lot better on the flat than they do over jumps so I am looking forward to some serious number crunching in a couple of months. Before we know it the 2000 Guineas will be upon us and then the summer will simply flash by and hopefully we can make the most of it here on the blog.

Paul Nicholls has stated that neither Kauto Star nor Denman will be retired and this is obviously the right decision. Kauto went through the Gold Cup with all of his old zest before not seeing out the strongly run three and a quarter miles and with Ruby Walsh back on board he looked as if there are still big performances to come. I would love to see him take Long Run on again in the King George with Ruby on and in the form he obviously was in last Friday he would give the young champion plenty to think about. Denman is lightly raced compared to his stable companion and has more miles in his legs and there is no reason to retire him when he can keep bringing home decent cash. It is great news that they will both be backand I look forward to Walsh and Kauto proving some of the growing number of doubters wrong.

Apparently it is going to be a spring like day with temperatures getting up to 17 degrees. Of course that will mean nothing to me locked away in the booth today but with a similar day predicted tomorrow I am looking forward to a day in the garden. The lawn was cut yesterday and a fair bit of tidying was undertaken and a couple more days work will see the job done and the garden ready for summer. The going is currently good on my lawn with mossy patches on the home turn and weeds galore near the winning post but even moss and weeds look OK when you have run the mower over them. Tricks of the trade you know!

OK, time for me to get ready for the office. Enjoy the sun!

Today’s Selection

3.50 Kempton – Pere Blanc (11/4 Victor Chandler )