Racetrack Wiseguy

 I wasn't expecting to be detailing the proceedings on the turf in quite such detail in mid-May, when my interest usually lies low and waits for October but I'm prompted to some thoughts by the Professor who points out Wiseguy in the 7.25 at Warwick tomorrow night,

I assume you will be on Wiseguy tomorrow night.  

He's ahead of me but, yes, I am now.

I like to have a 'flagship' horse. Rainyday Woman became a poem before losing her way; Fantastic Lady has done much to live up to her name but it's only the likes of A.P. McCoy (Champ) and me that get horses named after them.

There's everything to like about Wiseguy at Warwick tomorrow night. Mr Henderson is placing a few winners at this easier time of year although I hope they don't all struggle like Choccabloc had to at Rasen today.

I myself had given back half of the year's profit thus far before regaining it, some of it at Chester

with the likes of Savethelastdance when she put 22 lengths into a field of hopefuls who can't all have run below form, upheld 'pop music theory' and smooched to favouritism for the Oaks for which I was just quick enough to take advantage of 2/1 with Corals and make use of a free bet I didn't know what else to do with. Look how blurred the also rans in the background are in this photo from Chester.

But being clever doesn't always help in sport. Look at Frank Lampard with his IQ of 178. Maybe his players can't follow his brilliant thinking and the Good Lord only knows how somebody so bright can be expected to play alongside Wayne Rooney. But I entered two competitions to name horses for the Coral Racing Club, very much my sort of game, one might have thought. I bundled in with numerous suggestions for a horse by Cotai Glory out of Green Boulevard that got better as the night went on but they decided to call it Aspire to Glory. Any bloody dimwit could have could have come up with that. But, tragically, I was too late for the deadline to name a horse by Sixties Icon out of Shadow inthenight.

Hank Marvin would have won that by 22 lengths, surely, had it been supplemented. So that horse will be known as Rockstar Icon.

I ask you.

 

I did have to consider my position on horse racing at Aintree. Fitzy and A.P. put up very poor defences of the industry that's made them rich and famous and were no better than Mr. Kipling defending cake. All the protestors are right - Extinction Rebellion, the nurses on strike, those that glue themselves to the M25, and the way the world is, designed by and for vanity projects by mostly male, overblown narcissists, is wrong.

It's not easy, but I've been vegetarian as best I can since 1995. I don't require animals to die. It's not the expressed intention of horse racing that animals should die as it is in hunting, shooting and fishing although too many horses do.

I'm also good at it. It's an interest that pays for itself these days and has done for years and me not doing it wouldn't stop it happening, which isn't the most copper-bottomed and righteous reason to be involved but it's not self-righteous, either. And so one finds a way, somehow, to carry on doing what one does.  

 

I had a vague idea that I had done a little yankee at Chester this afternoon and when I got home and looked at the results it looked like I'd landed it and I was quids in. I couldn't find it on my accounts, though. What I did find was a similar effort at Market Rasen in which all four came nowhere. And that, honestly, is how hilarious the game can be.

That's a tip in itself, in the 5.25 at Warwick, ridden by Bridget. Glorious Fun.

I wasn't always the most diligent about my homework in some subjects at school, I'd rather understand it without trying and get away with it.

So, let's see what happens. Don't put any actual money on the races on ITV, wait for those easy races they try to hide from us,

Wiseguy (Warwick, 7.25)

Glorious Fun (5.25).

 

TO THE REGIMENT.

I WISH I WAS THERE.