angeleyz

well that was an interesting first day for my blog. my first intended race, the 3.00 plumpton, i felt i had no choice but to trade out on saroque, as more rain than was forecast fell overnight. i felt that was detrimental to the chances of avoca promise and de blacksmith who i had rated as the two most likely challengers to saroque on soft ground.

i may be a little controversial here but i have to say i cannot believe connections ran avoca promise on that ground, especially as they must have seen the previous races. i think they risked serious harm to the horse who clearly hated the ground and surely they must have known that would be the case.

de blacksmith just about handled the conditions but again i feel the ground was too bad for him and i am sure he will be seen to better effect on less testing going. in the end, saroque was beaten fair and square at a betfair sp of 2.9. i still think i made the right decision to trade out as i do think the heavy ground actually helped his cause, even though he could only manage 3rd.

for my second lay i decided to go against echo brava in the 3.20 at lingfield. unfortunately i didnt get a lot matched at my first asking price of 3.25 and i was hoping to lay lower. in the end it was a strange race. i fancied slip of the tongue and mica mika to go well but both were somewhat disappointing. but i did think the race had a fair amount of strength in depth and it was the mark johnston runner blue wave who bounced back to form in some style. i kind of overlooked him as i thought looking at the form of his last few runs, i got the feeling there was a problem with the horse. one thing i had overlooked, which i was later informed by fellow poster crepello (ty for that) was that the horse had since been gelded.

so overall i am pretty satisfied with the first day, roll on tomorrow.