James
@jamesaknight
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Last Seen Profiles
If the Arc ends up as a behind-closed-doors, heavy going match between Enable and Stradivarius with just the Blogger in attendance - then COVID has officially won 2020 and we are finished.
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Well if the Constitution Hill rumours are true and he is out of the Festival, at least we can console ourselves that connections have given us so many other moments to enjoy with the horse this season
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It's one of the massive frustrations of modern NH racing that so few trainers think - "I've got a really good horse who is fit and well, so fuck it - let's go for the big one". This was absolutely joyous stuff from Coneygree. Rest in peace Mark Bradstock
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This is what the Cheltenham obsession has done to NH racing. A trainer not running former Champion Chaser in the second most important race of the season because they are apparently worried about 'bottoming' it ahead of a race which is over 3 months away.
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That didn't ride anything like a Grand National of old (or even a Grand National of relatively new), but the reality is that this kind of race is exactly what the sport needs in its shop window if it wants to be around in the years to come.
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Racing Twitter is so exhausting after the National with its binary takes. Newsflash - it is perfectly possible to be a huge supporter of horse racing and to love the concept of the Grand National, but also to think the race wasn't a good advert for our sport on its biggest day.
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Fair play to them - Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock and Chris Whitty have clearly read this tweet and delivered...
#skininthegame
SKIN IN THE GAME
All those in the UK who are in favor of the "herd immunity" BS should self-infect with the virus. Includes ALL decision-makers, science advisors and "Boris no Precaution".
Now.
#SkinintheGame
is about filtering those with systemic danger out of the system.
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I'm not sure I've ever seen a set of entries that screams 'the sport is broken' more than this one. I mean what the hell is going on here?
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@jonbecker_
Michelin starred restaurants are hugely overrated and largely just represent an opportunity for wealthy people to show off, rather than being genuinely desirable places in which to eat.
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Let's all stop getting carried away. You'll only know Jonbon is a genuine superstar when his trainer refuses to run him.
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Today's Champion Stakes is a reminder of just how good Frankel was. The post race excuse narrative is easy for Baaeed - long season, soft ground, sub-optimal conditions blah blah. Frankel had all of that, slept in the gates & still bossed the best heavy ground 10f monster around.
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Breaking: Emily Davidson will now NOT throw herself in front of the King's horse. The suffragette had been planning to protest today, but having walked the track, she felt the ground was faster than advertised, potentially unsafe & could compromise the rest of her campaign.
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Wow. This clip kind of makes you gulp when you realise what the sport has lost. Great times.
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A point that a lot of people miss is that if you banned Racing, these horses simply wouldn't exist at all. So the moral debate is not 'quiet field chewing grass v tackling Aintree fences', it's whether a racehorse's life & all that that entails is better than no life at all.
The campaign group Animal Rising plans to 'disrupt' the Grand National on Saturday, calling on animal lovers to 'turn up' and 'make their voices heard'.
But would this protest cause more harm than good?
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It's an absolute shitshow that no-one knows where the favourite is running in the Supreme or Baring Bingham at this late stage. It's soft ground give or take, so make your mind up and stop messing punters and fans around. Cheltenham becoming borderline farcical this season.
🗣 "I think Ballyburn would win either race, but I have more reason to take him on in the Supreme, so I would run him in the Baring Bingham"
🗣 "There seems to be the potential for more to go wrong in a Supreme"
Which race should Ballyburn run in at the Cheltenham Festival?👇
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There was a moment there when I thought the commentator had passed away midrace.
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Well done to team Corach Rambler, but I don't think that race was a great advert for Horse Racing. Further work needs to be done to make the race safer and a more palatable spectacle imo.
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Seamie’s riding from 2f to 1f out is unacceptable here
Here’s how he did it! 🏆
AUGUSTE RODIN is a 1️⃣5️⃣th Irish Derby winner for Aidan O’Brien and a FIRST for Ryan Moore 👏
#競馬 | #ディープインパクト
#IrishDerby
@curraghrace
@hriracing
@DDFRacing
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The smartly kitted out Warren Street
@coral
well worth a visit. Betting shop of the future? (PS spot the imposter in these pics)
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Marracudja up 11lb for taking on Defi Du Seuil and Un De Sceaux in a slowly run race. And he bled. Seems incredibly harsh to me and hardly an incentive to have a go in these graded races with a good handicapper.
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The Cheltenham Festival will always be the pinnacle of NH racing and no-one wants to change that, but today categorically proves that the rest of the winter doesn't have to be as dull as ditchwater at its expense. Bravo Ireland 🇮🇪👏
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Got a great new idea for Racing. Why don't we get a load of the best horses, run them in competitive races, in familiar colours at one of the best racecourses in the world? No contrived teams, brands or Olly Murs afterwards. Just horse racing. We could call it the Ebor meeting.
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“If it isn’t the ground, it’s the track. If it isn’t the track, it’s the timing. If it isn’t the timing, you can bet your bottom dollar it’ll be something else. Fans are getting bored of it. And, sadly, they’re right to be” -
@LydiaHislop
on the money again.
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Lol @ anyone who thinks a race like this survives in the modern age. Time moves on, things change and adapt. Move on.
For those of you have only been watching the Grand National for the last few years, this is the race I grew up watching and fell in love with.
I don’t even even get excited watching the race anymore.
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Great result, that. Great for Bryony with all the pathetic weighing room BS and great for Paul Nicholls for actually running his fucking horses on a Saturday! Bravo.
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The best race I have seen in the last 24 hours was still Blogger getting chinned in the trotting.
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Fair to say Prince Khalid had more genuine superstar horses than anyone else in the history of horse racing. And he owned the very best of the lot. Just hope the Juddmonte operation can continue in his absence.
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Good to see Alastair Down back...
Alastair Down joins Sam Hanson to reflect on his love of the Cheltenham Festival and his finest memories of Prestbury Park
📺 Watch the full episode here 👉
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Siri, can you sum up the state of National Hunt Racing in 2024 in one screenshot please?
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When are these arseholes going to realise that ruining events like this for ordinary people actively damages their cause? They get further and further away from public sympathy. It really is as simple as that.
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Horse Racing - “ban him from racecourses and from accessing the sport”
🚨 Insane numbers of media exposure for 7 days in the racing world.
- 104 Million Impressions
- 15 Million Media Views
- 1 Million Profile Visits
👑 Incredible absolutely incredible.
#CheltenhamFestival
#Racingblogger
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British racing at its shambolic best today. "It takes a long time to get to the post at Newbury". Leave the paddock earlier then ffs.
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5 in Arkle, 9 in Mares Hurdle and Ultima fails to fill by 6. And people are talking about adding another day to this...
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Utterly bizarre that we have a situation whereby we have seven race meetings in the UK today and only two tomorrow in a world where there are no crowds allowed at any of them. Racing is self harming with this type of fixture planning.
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There is way too much Horse Racing on today. Seven UK & Ire is crazy for a Saturday afternoon - impossible to follow, massively sub-optimal for betting turnover and fan engagement.
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Dreadful stuff here from Luke Harvey - implying good-soft ground will lead to tendon injuries. If that’s the case, just be done with NH and put in an All Weather track.
"If there's any risk at all, I don't think he'll run"
There will be no Edwardstone this afternoon despite the official going Good to Soft, and it looks set to improve.
Will we lose Constitution Hill too?
#ITVRacing
|
#TheOpeningShow
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@kevinblake2011
The lad comes across as an absolute star in that clip. What a shocking world it is at times.
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Great that
@itvracing
have three days of free-to-air coverage this week. In terms of being able to follow the best horses, I don't think fans of the sport have ever had it so good. Racing shouldn't take this for granted.
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BREAKING: New Vaccination priority order announced by the British government following new SAGE advice on vulnerability.
1. Margaret Keenan
2. William Shakespeare
3. Altior
4. All Over 90s
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ITV are doing a great job for Horse Racing this week - four afternoons of coverage and the Racing League on Thursday evening. It's an incredible commitment to the sport really.
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The more jump racing you watch the more you admire what Kauto Star achieved - not so much his peak level, but the fact he came back from so many bruising battles and showed top class form time and time again. Most of these horses have one big season in them, two if you are lucky.
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Nick Luck in excellent form again today - not allowing Ralph to scatter grenades around unchallenged. Clear once again from this week's efforts that in him and Lydia Hislop, Racing TV have two people operating at a different level to their peers.
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Just back the most soul-destroying outcome in each race and you'd be absolutely flying this week
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David Jennings says- "Don't be hasty to rubbish a 5 day Festival". Yet his proposed Saturday looks like this..
1.15: Fred Winter
2.00: Close Brothers
2.45: X Country Chase
3.30: Ryanair
4.15: Mares' Novices' Hurdle
5.00: Kim Muir
There's only one word for this - RUBBISH.
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Pray for Lily and Luca. My fucking word...
The two last people in the queue are asked how they felt, 'I think it's the best thing I've ever done in my life, even having my children Lily and Luca, I think this tops that'
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Racing can be sensationally good when you get a race like the Clarence House. All efforts should be focused on encouraging the best horses to meet more regularly & moving the centre of gravity away from the Festival. Today's race is odds-on to be better than anything we see there
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He's better than that, but least we can now all agree Baaeed can't be mentioned in the same breath as Frankel or Sea The Stars.
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Not running Constitution Hill at Punchestown because of what happened to Golden Cygnet in a handicap hurdle in Scotland 44 years ago. Understandable.
"It's difficult."
Nicky Henderson says the decision as to whether Constitution Hill will take on Honeysuckle
@punchestownrace
will be made in the next 24 hours and explains to
@alexsteedman
why we may not see the pair clash until next year's Cheltenham Festival 👀
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Very interesting comment from Patrick Mullins in the Racing Post re Cheltenham. It seems the Festival is losing a bit of its magic even for the yard that is absolutely cleaning up
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An awful look for horse racing this morning with this, factually correct, headline in the Times.
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The Rashford story really is one of the most heartening things to have happened in this country for a while. Convinced his campaign succeeded where a lot of others may have failed due to his complete sincerity. No hint of an agenda other than wanting to do the right thing.
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Jeremy Corbyn made a more convincing challenge on Polling Day than Havlin managed here...
Wow! Polling Day somehow manages to hold off his fast-finishing stablemate Stowell, winning for
@FrankieDettori
and John and Thady Gosden at
@LingfieldPark
…
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A big retrospective thanks to all the high profile sportsmen and women who have just quit on the spot. A year long farewell tour, followed by this ‘will he, won’t he’ schtick and then presumably the unretirement announcement - am I the only one finding this rather tiresome?
“I’m saying nothing!”
Dettori keeps tight-lipped as Gosden implies farewell tour could be extended.
News on a big milestone - and potentially a big development - in this
@RacingPost
Members’ Club colour piece from Newmarket yesterday.
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Royal Ascot does a lot right and certainly doesn't seem intent on killing itself in the same way that the Cheltenham Festival does. But 6.10pm finishes really need to get in the bin, as does having the feature handicaps of the week at 5.00pm. Move everything forward 40 mins.
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...that UK National Hunt will start to have a real 'Europa League' feel to it. Make no mistake, this week was an absolute embarrassment for the top UK yards. They are not even close to being good enough to compete, yet we waste all season building towards this! Time for a rethink
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This genuinely is a nightmare for the Henderson yard when so much effort has gone into preparing horses for this meeting. If there is a silver lining, maybe it will encourage them to run them more during the rest of the season in future, because this is the worst of both worlds.
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If no-one talked about Cheltenham until about mid-February the whole season would be a lot, lot better. And setbacks like Ferny Hollow’s are a reminder just to run these horses while you can. So often we wait for races and clashes at the Festival that never happen.
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Know it isn't the point of this clip (and all the best to Ted Walsh in the future) but Jane Mangan is becoming an excellent racing broadcaster.
Truly the end of an era as Ted Walsh announces his retirement from racing punditry. Good luck Ted
#RTEracing
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ITV4 putting on these extra Sundays (covering Exeter and Punchestown this week) is really good news for the great game that is Horse Racing. Well done
@itvracing
. Right - that's my positive tweet for the week out of the way...
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Take a look at his 06/07 campaign - it puts anything any horse attempts these days to shame. Old Roan, Betfair, Tingle Creek, King George, AON, Gold Cup - 111111 - seems incredible to even run in all those races now, let alone win them all!
The more jump racing you watch the more you admire what Kauto Star achieved - not so much his peak level, but the fact he came back from so many bruising battles and showed top class form time and time again. Most of these horses have one big season in them, two if you are lucky.
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Just catching up on Panorama. A lot of the shocking footage related to poor abattoir management, but anyone thinking it wasn't terrible for Horse Racing is completely deluded. Seeing the orange number on Vyta Du Roc as he was led into the kill room was genuinely stomach churning.
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Reminder - this is what the final day used to look like...
Triumph Hurdle (and no Fred Winter to remove runners)
Stayers Hurdle
Gold Cup
Foxhunter
Grand Annual
Cathcart
County Hurdle
i.e - a brilliant mix of quality and competitiveness - everything the Festival should stand for
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It will get lost in the wider story, but this is a huge loss for Horse Racing - the Queen was in many ways British racing’s greatest asset. Certainly Royal Ascot will never be the same.
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Constitution Hill 2024
-Unibet Hurdle - NR "He's Nico's ride and it doesn't make sense to run him when he's unavailable"
-Irish Champion - NR "We don't want to travel too close to Cheltenham"
-Champion Hurdle - WINS at 1/6
-Aintree Hurdle - NR "Aintree too close to Cheltenham"
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Does amaze me how all these journalists seem to have bought this narrative that you can't run more than a couple of times before a Champion Hurdle. Everyone trotting out the same nonsense - "don't want to leave a mark" etc. Just retire them and do dressage if that's your MO.
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Racing had a treasure in Bryony Frost – and closed ranks to bury it
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If Jim Bolger has laid Mac Swiney out to win a Group 1 to coincide with this 100 year anniversary, it is the greatest naming-and-then-subsequent-training feat of all time.
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If Frankie couldn't beat Nella Rose in a popularity contest, I don't fancy his chances much here tbph
Racing fans urged to get behind Frankie Dettori after he is shortlisted for BBC Sports Personality of the Year award
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@GaryLineker
He talks an unbelievable amount of bullshit, but he's right on this point. The UK has far more cases than it officially claims - and the reason is clearly the lack of testing.
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Must admit I find most racing & gambling books pretty dull on the whole, but enjoying this as a book to read by the pool.
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On a positive for Racing UK, Luck On Sunday has been absolutely tremendous this year and is the best horse racing programme on TV by a country mile. Nick Luck deserves 'Broadcaster of the Year' for the two epic Johnny G interviews alone.
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This focus on 'saving Christmas' really irks. Who gives one single **** about Christmas in the context of saving people's lives and protecting their livelihoods?
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Ha ha ha - loving this new generation of Blogger tribute acts 😂
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Kevin Blake has been miles ahead of his journalistic counterparts in terms of highlighting the structural issues that NH racing faces - and so many of the those issues are now coming to a head at the Festival.
This week's column: The Cheltenham Festival is approaching the brink. RTs appreciated.
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Aintree is much better than Cheltenham isn't it? Creeps up on you & then suddenly you have a meeting that is almost as good, but you aren't completely sick of hearing about it. And the National is off-the-charts good as a betting event - it's the perfect betting creation really.
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Sounds like Mullins wants these races to be actual schooling sessions (if they weren’t already). “Why hit her?” - erm it’s a horse race Willie.
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This ‘should have had a second penalty taker’ theorem is literally the worst aftertiming of all time.
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No-one even vaguely normal ends up with their bike under this van. Attention seeking nonsense
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Heartwarming to see a win for the little guys as William Mullins, well known in point-to-point circles, lands a family success in the Foxhunter.
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This is what happens when an entire sport becomes completely polarised around one event - it’s a disaster when that event doesn’t deliver what everyone has been waiting and hoping for.
BREAKING: Constitution Hill out of
@CheltenhamRaces
- gutted doesn’t even go close to how I feel. 🥲🥲🥲
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In a world where a lot of normal folk are being 'furloughed' under government schemes, can anyone explain why some footballers are still getting paid six figures a week for doing nothing?
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Just received this through from Kwasi Kwarteng. I think we can now draw a line under the incident and move on.
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Today marks the day you realize how much better Royal Ascot is than Cheltenham. The six day entries start filtering through and the anticipation builds for the week ahead. Compare and contrast to working out where the pace comes from in the Gold Cup in the first week of January💤
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The Covid policy in this country is broken - my kids are exposed to a thousand people every day at school (and by extension thousands more), yet the government pick and choose to be super cautious with other gatherings. No-one can take anything they say seriously now.
BREAKING: Doncaster Racecourse has confirmed that, after today, the rest of the meeting will be held behind closed doors.
More to follow at
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Tory majority now 1.33, so we're basically 1/3 to leave the EU with a hard - or more specifically, a No Deal Brexit. Must be the only country on earth to actually vote for effectively another financial crisis. Hard to escape conclusion we will deserve exactly what is coming to us
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Cheltenham is special because of and only because of the quality of racing it offers (or offered). Kill that and you have Galway Mk2 - a substandard excuse for a week long piss-up with the odd good race thrown in.
Not sure why some are anti a 5th Cheltenham day. The place is unreal. I’d be at Cheltenham every day if it was possible. Showpiece event for our sport, everyone loves it, commercially makes sense. Kick on I say.
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No-one will admit it in print, but Oisin Murphy is making Horse Racing a lot more interesting at the moment isn't he?
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Royal Ascot really does looks better than ever this year. Buckingham Palace BACK, the 5f 3yo handicap BACK, the Saturday now basically a festival of speed - and best of all, no fashion segments or Rule Britannia around the bandstand to endure.
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This is nonsense. And dangerous nonsense at that.
🗣️
@MCYeeehaaa
- "The damage that could be done to Constitution Hill is what?"
🗣️
@sevenbarrows
- "In my opinion, if I'd have ran Constitution Hill yesterday, he'd have been in his box for a year wounded..."
Your thoughts?
#RacingDebate
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She got away with it because she is Rachael Blackmore. Not a good look.
Rachael Blackmore finished fourth aboard Lady Rita earlier at Kilbeggan.
The stewards enquired into whether the jockey rode a finish a circuit too soon, but they were satisfied and no action has been taken
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No-one really knows how things pan out from here, but one fairly realistic hope is that Horse Racing can continue in some form behind closed doors. With a lot of people stuck at home and virtually no other sport on, it might be a chance for the sport to gain some more followers.
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Great to see Longchamp back this afternoon. Then we have the Masters this evening, Breezes-Ups at Donny tomorrow, the Champions League, the Grand National, the Craven, the Scottish National. What do people who don't like sport do with their lives?
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Seen a lot of comment about how many horses have won this much cash first time out. Better question - how many horses have run up to this form level first time up? She's mashed up 95-100 horses by 6 lengths.
Oh, my 👀
One Look (Gleneagles) absolutely dazzles on debut in Europe's richest juvenile race, the
@Goffs1866
Million
@curraghrace
Sensational stuff from
@paddytwomey
and
@wjlee24786
💰💰💰
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Something incredibly British and ‘ Racing’ about tens of thousands of people piling into Cheltenham today, as virtually every other major event on the planet is cancelled. May as well enjoy it guess...
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