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Good afternoon from Uttoxeter where it is overcast. There have been a couple of showers this morning, but nothing too bad, although it was absolutely lashing down about five miles down the road. The going is still Good, Good to soft in places although another heavy shower could well take it to Good to Soft all round.
There has been 8mm of rain since yesterday.
All fences will be jumped this afternoon and the crossings, which caused the problems last time, have been covered.
We now have a dozen non-runners, all going related.
Hope the rain holds off for you; it’s a strange mix of cloud, wind, grey and bright blue sky just up the road here! Anything could happen..and probably will!
Thanks Mo.
Have just has a walk round and managed to almost ruined my shoes – definitely on the soft side of good and I can see the ground cutting up.
Did you hear that commentary on Openide’s race? What a shocker! Makes you wonder how one or two of them get work, has had plenty of nominations for the worst ever commentary on Betfair and some questioning whether he was backing it in running
Was it Phil Currie?
Alan Jones had it right off again – the racing authorities wonder why people think racing is crooked and this bloke gets away with it 4 or 5 times a year.
It was Iain McKenzie and admittedly not a commentary that will go into his all time top ten greatest.
However, in his defence when he made the comment that Openide was beaten he wasn’t the only one with that view – he did look as though he wasn’t going to go through with his effort.
Even I thought he was beaten half way down the straight and I had backed the blessed thing, so had every reason to be more optimistic than most.
On the Alan Jones runner, Secret Dancer, his explanation (which, as usual, was noted by the Stewards) was the horse is "fragile" which is why he pulled up on his previous starts and he contended that today he ran up to his flat form.
Think it was last November he used the excuse that Norisan (40’s into 11’s) benefitted from the addition of a tongue tie and going right handed (going RH he had a very poor record IIRC) – he hadn’t tried the TT before either.
Strikes me that the BHA are letting him get away with robbery – doesn’t do the image of racing any good at all, either for owners, trainers, punters, bookmakers or casual followers when you see horses like this with absolutely no hurdles form whatsover romping home having been well supported on the earlies.
However, in his defence when he made the comment that Openide was beaten he wasn’t the only one with that view – he did look as though he wasn’t going to go through with his effort.
It wouldn’t be the first time Openide has pleased nobody but his own sweet self – he has earned both a Timeform squiggle and the epiphets of ungenuine and not one to trust.
He entered the race on a 32-race losing streak, many of the recent efforts in which run had earned comments of "soon lost place", "soon lost interest", etc. (including at Ffos Las last time, where Iain Mackenzie definitely did the race-reading for the
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, and the gelding’s preceding run at Stratford, where I’m 95% sure he also did), so today’s race probably looked like more of the same from some way out.
The comments on the Betfair forum suggesting Iain was playing in-running barely deserve a polite response; other than to observe that if the Uttoxeter commentary box is still the same open, exposed, crude pen I remember from my most recent visit to the course (October 2004), just keeping the monitor and binoculars safely gathered in and dry would prove all the distraction any commentator would crave!
gc
The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
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