Sport is made for betting

Newbury 1400 Fri Apr 21 EBF Stallions Maiden Stakes 5f34yds, Class 4, 1m3.38s (slow by 3.98s) Good to Firm All previously unraced. Gold Town . Mar 28. Didn't go to the sales. Dam a Listed winner and won four times at two, peaking at OR106 from 11 starts. Stable's first 2yo runner in 2017 won on Tuesday (Sound and Silence). Away well, restrained to sit handy to the pace. Came off Qaaraat's back at the furlong and put in a few nice strides to promptly take control. Nice turn of foot and held the others at bay, still had something left on the line. Headway . Mar 14. 60k gns yearling (38k gns foal). Dam won three times 1m2f-1m3f. In astute stable, backed from 9/1 into 7/1. Broke well, wanted to overrace early when restrained to the back of the field. Edged forward to challenge at the furlong pole in a line of five and couldn't quite hold off the winner. Couldn't see the whip pulled at all, certainly one to watch. Embour . Apr 28. £145k yearling (€98k foal). All...

Glad to see the rescheduled meeting going ahead at Newbury tomorrow. Awful scenes last Saturday with the freak electrocution of two horses before the first race. You just can't write procedures in a manual to deal with something as bizarre and unexpected as that. Criticising the officials for running the first race after that is easy in hindsight. One thing that British racing needs to get right though is its professionalism. Jockey Hadden Frost on Tuesday went for home a lap early in a three-mile chase and then ended up with egg on his face when crossing the finish line only meant he had a lap left to go. The jockey made a mistake, fair enough. But to let him off with just a slap on the wrist isn't good enough. This is a professional industry. Punters lost tens of thousands on that horse across the country; they get nothing back for his incompetence. Stewards said the penalty range for this infringement was just 10-14 days, so he got the midpoint of 12 days. Soft as butter. ...

Went to the races as a paying punter today for the first time in ages. UK racing isn't cheap at the best of times, flat racing doesn't have the excitement most of the year and it's rather cold during jumps season. TV coverage is decent enough if you can't get to the track as often as you'd like. The two main races today at Newbury, the Long Distance Hurdle and the Hennessy showed just why National Hunt racing is miles ahead of flat racing in popularity in the UK & Ireland. Big Buck's is the best staying hurdler in training, he won the top races at Cheltenham and Aintree in his class, and is going around again to repeat the feat. He faced a small, but quality field at level weights and won very, very easily. Special thanks to the bookies who put up 1/2. It is very rare I bet at those odds, but this horse should have been 1/3 at best, so the value had to be taken. The Hennessy is the best handicap chase of the season. Note that key word which some purists dete...