8th February 2016

Cirano de Sivola continued winnings ways for the yard at Larkhill yesterday. He jumped beautifully, took it up at the top of the hill and galloped away from a very smart looking 4-year-old by Midnight Legend to win by 5 lengths going away. He is in tip top shape this morning and will now be ticked over before being offered for sale. We may or may not go to the next Cheltenham sale. In the past, we have rushed horses to the next available sale when they haven’t fully recovered from their race and, for a few reasons it has never worked. We will see where we are at the end of the week and make a decision.

Pinnacle Panda has come out of his race in great sprits and we will see what the handicapper has to say before making any further plans. This week was looking busy on the racing front but the weather has played its part and Chase End Charlie is the only likely runner at this stage.

The entries at Barbury Castle are huge on Sunday – I’m surprised they haven’t divided the 3 mile maiden at entry, 41 entries and chaos on the day looks inevitable, dividing at entry is a difficult one and the safest solution for organisers is to divide on the day. The team at Weatherbys can’t have had time to put up Buckfastleigh entries as they state they won’t be available on line until tomorrow. Poor effort I’m afraid. Chaddesley Corbett appears to have re-arranged their lost meeting over the weekend for this coming Saturday. I made an entry for the meeting which was due to take place yesterday. It appears that entries didn’t stand and were re-opened. Weatherbys took my entry but failed to email me to explain the situation. Thankfully, I didn’t want to re-enter, however, it would have been nice to have been informed of what was going on. Poor effort again I’m afraid! I recall listening to a spokes person of Weatherbys complaining about the lack of subscribers to their service at the AGM a couple of years ago – you may ask yourselves why?

We have got off lightly with storm Imogen, I listened to the radio for a minuet driving to Hereford and it appears that there is carnage in the West Country. That maybe why Weatherbys haven’t got the Buckfastleigh entries, the pigeons couldn’t fly.