Racetrack Wiseguy

 Those legions of readers that come here for the off-beat Wiseguy wit and wisdom (except I'm sure they don't) would have noticed we didn't do too bad yesterday.

I did very much the same thing today, too, getting nearly everything right apart from the nap. 7 winners out of 10 horses over the weekend somehow contrived to lose me maybe £4. I'm like Eric Morecambe talking to Andre Previn,
I'm picking the right horses but not necessarily putting them in the right order.

 

Hartur d'Oudairies for the Skeltons at Exeter today was going to be worth a large amount (for me). I could have cashed in the trebles, maybe, for an okay profit and left to 4-timer to see what happened but, no, one puts those bets on to see them through, this is the big chance. Harry rode confidently enough from the back like a few other jockeys and it was him out of all of those who got that right but none of them realized that Venetia, who only had her first winner of the season yesterday, had a blot on the handicap who was away and gone.

Who'd have thought it.

It's not an easy game. I wouldn't like it if it was. One does well to stick to the plan and gradually see it work out. It's just a lot more gradual than it could be. There is much to be grateful for, like Scarface at Ascot and Venetia's Fontaine Collonges at Haydock winning by inches, but then some of them sluice in and you know you could have briefly re-mortgaged the house and risked becoming homeless for the sheer thrill of it and come out so much the richer.

Except that making oneself richer isn't the point. I don't need to be rich. I only want to keep myself in the plus for the sakes of the game. This year looks like another in safe keeping, which is more than you can say about the Qatar goal. 

They don't want to talk about politics or human rights, they want us to talk about the football. Okay, then, you're useless at that as well. Great kit. Perhaps they'd rather we talked about fashion sense. Second only to Portugal. But I watched twenty minutes of that which is about as much meaningless football as one can take. I'll leave it for a while and give it a chance to get interesting.

I see that England kick off vs. our friends from Iran at 1 pm. That's no use to me with Brentford Hope, classy enough from the flat to think he's only had to be shown how to get over a hurdle, in the 1.05 at Ludlow.

I'll hope to go back to the football in time to see the first of several England goals, not through any feelings of patriotism but because a resounding England win might make me a few free quid.

England's best hope, it looks like, is getting to the quarter finals and being seen off in short order by France. If it comes to that then Gareth Southgate can move on with all the dignity he brought to the job and doing as well as he could have. You could call him a 'nearly man' but only because nobody else would have done nearly as well.

If Brentford Hope wins, the plan is to put the winnings on Molly Olly's Wishes (Kempton 2.55) in a Monday race far more interesting than some of those staged at Ascot on Saturday. I entirely take Mr. Henderson's point that neither Altior or Cyrname were ever the same again after grinding themselves into the Ascot mud while the Professor and I looked on from the comfort of the hospitality suite. On the other hand, the ground wasn't far off completely normal yesterday. Paul Nicholls is sending his horses out and about and getting on with it.