Not the most sparkling Friday, and I apologise. I think there are days when one is simply trying to over-deliver – certainly I overthought it. There was nothing among the winners that really surprised me, but I never even discussed them, and indeed I dismissed a number on the grounds of price rather than ability. …
Author: Capt. Kneesup
Newmarket July Meeting Day 2
Yesterday’s Raceweb advisory was a tale of two halves. On the real and considered side of the equation, we were +4pts with a win and two decent places. Then in the second half I also referenced an amusing possible Ryan Moore Across the card “fun” bet, by which, I hope you understand, I mean very,…
Newmarket July Meeting Day 1. Raceweb Year 3
Last Saturday saw another decent performance for Raceweb with an overall 14.97 pts profit to start the month of July with. The weekend also gave me the chance to catch up with an analysis of recent results, allowing me to remember that we showed an overall profit for Royal Ascot – but had four losing…
24th in line to becoming French
We are rapidly approaching a moment in time when it really will be statistically more likely that you will be killed by your toaster than by Covid. Did you know that in May, COVID-19 (and please assume you, mealy-mouthed, statistical apparatchiks, that we precisely understand your deliberate vagueness when using the words “of”, “by”, and…
Up the Amazon, without a cooker.
All in all a pretty good week, certainly in terms of my sitting for a few moments of respite on The Moral High Ground. This week’s MHG is the Amazon Basin which, it turns out, has a large plughole at the bottom, through which the Dunfermline workers hurl perfectly good bits of kit. As their…
Sunday Brunch
I owe you all a huge apology. I was so wrapped up in the whole stick-in-tonsils-swizzle-test thing that I forgot myself. The Drowning and the huge reversal of fortunes between Thursday midday and eight pm on Saturday didn’t help, but still and all I should have mentioned backing The Lib Dems to win Chesham. There…
Ascot Day Sank
How went your day at the bio-secure experiment that was Ascot’s Day 4? I hear you ask. Well, my dears, there was horrendous traffic thanks to a collapsed road which cut off the M4 J14. The road closure resulted in our late arrival at a very delicious breakfast at The Royal Foresters, a highly recommended…
Ascot Day 4
It was a day when the Shortlist produced 3 winners and the final selections looked like after-thoughts. Mark you, much of the day was lost to trying to decipher a set of NHS instructions in order to take two tests, in order to gain access to Ascot. What is it about all Government communications that…
Ascot Day 3
Work raises its ugly head and delays matters, while winking at me from the sideboard are the 227 tests I have to take before Friday’s big adventure. But first, we must continue our labours against the bookies and, as labours go, yesterday went pretty well. We’re showing a 30pt profit for the meeting so far,…
Ascot Day 2
Sometimes you have days when God leaps out of bed and says “Here I am – and because you have recently been less of an arse than normal, I have decided you shall have a good day.” So you go for lunch with old friends and see a chum you haven’t seen for five years…
For a brief moment we all became Christians
Thanks to the Welsh, the first score draw arrived on Saturday, while I travelled back from Newmarket, having spent the morning with William Knight and the boys from Kennet Valley Thoroughbreds. We were taking pictures of their new branded racing kit, KVT having secured a decent sponsorship deal with the fast-growing pub company, Oakman Group…
A weekend off perhaps with some Turkish Delight
I find myself heading to Newmarket on business, and on the instructions of the Plantagenet Herald, I am obliged to leave at such a time and in such a manner as will get us to three very important shops en route that sell things I didn’t know we needed. My day is thus curtailed and…
Euro 2021 – Free Interactive spreadsheet
The entire Derby news flow seemed to judgementally focus on the “jocking off” of Adam Kirby from John Leeper and his reinstatement on Adayar, forgetting in turn that Kirby had jocked off Oisin. Regardless of the speed with which the silks were changing hands in the changing room, Adayar ran a blinder and looked to…
The Derby
While that wretched Liberal-wet, Green-belt-destroying PM has failed to make 4th June a National Holiday, (he’s always looked like he’d have been happier at Harrow), I cannot hold him responsible for the slow start to my Feast Day. No man can start such a day with no brekker, a mug of tea and a dash…
The denuded antepost list and how to pull Elle Macpherson
Endless numbers of “stars” and “celebrity doctors” keep insisting that for me to be well, I must be happy. For me to be happy I must… and there then follows on TV, a horrific list of things one must buy, achieve or obtain, depending on the time of day. Much of it appears to have…
The Pharaoh of Galway’s Birthday – A sort of Celebration!
Peter O’Tool celebrates his 60th birthday today and his feast day has bought out the sun, at a time and temperature that made breakfasting on the Terraza or “Yard” as the Americans call it, an absolute must. The rest of this post was originally going to be about Peter, aka The Pharaoh of Galway, and…
A glance through the news and a no-brainer punt
I glance through today’s papers and I find myself in despair at being the only sane person on the planet. Does that make me a bad person, or just mad? Naomi Osaka won’t win. A broader debate will follow. Somebody will use the words “white”, “middle-aged”, and “male” out of context and irrelevantly. Prince Harry…
Lord Tissue of Reputation in Tattersalls offers an apology…
Recently it has become obvious that our reputation here at Raceweb Towers for providing honest and scrupulously researched racing tips, political opinions, and other racing-related material has been tainted by a series of corporate failures. Unbeknownst to me as the Chief Executive in the days before my much-deserved ennoblement, it transpires that we did not…
Why we should be worried about both Boris and my tipping?
This week, somebody mentioned Prorogation on the radio and I started to reflect on the Supreme Court’s ruling in 2019, which found that BJ’s decision to advise Her Majesty to prorogue Parliament was unlawful, because it had the effect of frustrating or preventing the ability of parliament to carry out its constitutional functions. Therefore the…
USPGA
The first round gets underway in about an hour, and you would have had this sooner, but I fell into bad company yesterday at that very splendid pub The Queen’s Arms in East Garston run by the inestimable Freddie Tulloch. Whilst I started lunch with a head nod to the current calorie-conscious diet, it transpired…
If it’s BBC4 – it must be Eurovision?
Well, there’s unusual. BBC4 now regards The ESC as Art and I am wholly in admiration of Graham Norton, whose contracts seems to allow him to cover the Eurovision Song Contest for any and everyone. BBC, Virgin, Bratislavan WNK1 – anyone. He makes McEnroe at Wimbledon look like a sloth on Ketamine. Anyway, the money…
The Results To Date (July’19 – May ’21)
It’s been a while since I did this exercise, but like everyone else, I’m blaming galloping inertia, the absence of incentives, my parents who failed to disassociate their pain, and a sense of predestined failure. Taking advantage of the downtime of site maintenance, I have entered every outcome as accurately as possible, and I am…
Chips with everything. Huzzah!
This diet malarkey is doing my head in. I am obsessed with the numbers of Kcals (what was wrong with Cals?), and the difference between Carbs and Protein, (not a clue), and whether Dopamine or Thiamine are the same things. All I know is that every meal has to be recorded religiously, nay zealously on…
The Dante Meeting Day 2
Yesterday – I discovered appropriately today – was National Diary Day. In that vein, yesterday’s selections weren’t so appalling, but still, we were down a point for the day and all of it the 3l difference between the winner and Raymond Tusk at 40/1. I take no comfort in the words of one of my…
York’s Day 1 and welcome to the new Chairman
Stand by for another guff-fest from Ed “Woke” Chamberlain, where he waxes lyrical about the fact that A WOMAN is the Chairman of York Racecourse – the first in the history of The Knavesmire. “Extraordinary”. “What A Moment”. “The Glass Ceiling….” “Another step forward in equalising blah blah blah.” I am not such a royalist…
UPDATED: Rain-impacted selections revisited for Saturday
When I finally stepped down last night/this AM, I was soaked between office and bed. This morning, the going has changed and Lingfield is now as of 12:00 Soft – GS in places. The rain has only just stopped, and unless they have new drainage in, Lingfield tends to hold its water. Ascot is also…
It’s been a strange week. I tried to get involved at Chester but several working challenges presented themselves, so I didn’t. Obs, I kept up with the trials, but I have struggled to get excited about what I have seen so far, in terms of Derby contenders and even my ante-post High Definition started to…
The 1000 Guineas – and a Thank You
I know, I know. I was going to take a day off. But lying abed, feeling sorry for oneself, only works for so long, and besides, I also sensed the Raceform and Timeform race readers were gathering over the video reruns of my life. I could feel them polishing off the racing suffixes to be…
The 2000 Guineas – Punchestown Day 5 – Jab 2
For those of you eagerly anticipating the tips for Day 4 of Punchestown, I’m afraid I was laid low by Jab 2 and am not much better today. I won’t bore you with the details, but I am “cream-crackered”. Every one of my joints feels as though it has actually been to the glue factory…
Punchestown Day 3 Pfizer Vaccine 2
Another day, another jab, so far so good. However, as days go this has so far been relentless. Over an hour to get to the Jab centre, thanks to enormous traffic works that could not have been done when no traffic was on the road. The Jab centre was hugely efficient and a big well…
Punchestown Day 2 and the race that never was.
At the risk of sounding like a trainer, this is a difficult time of the year to get things right. Old stock is replaced with new, as muttering owners send their horses off in the truck to their new yard, (often sporting but not always racing), and the seasons change. Rare, because a tough and…
Punchestown Day 1 (and The Notts Oaks)
Over the next five days, we’ll see the lowering of the curtain on the Irish National Hunt season. We’ll see Rachel Blackmore trying to make up the four-race deficit that stands between her and Paul Townend in the race for the Championship and pretty well every day, there will be a race that decides future…
The last Huzzah of the Winter Game
The social whirl of dinners and drinks invitations this week suggested post-lockdown merriment is an unstoppable train. We have been flat out on the supper front this week. I suspect this has more to do with availability, or perhaps we are known for our huge wardrobe of sensible layered clothing. What I hope no one…
Kick-on Sunday
With the void left by Polly Dog and The Duke of Edinburgh, across our personal and national psyches, the unelected medical elite has decided to take back their rightful positions at the head of news coverage. The Pandemic Panjandrums are all plenists to their very fingertips and in their horror vacui, 4:01 pm on Saturday,…
Polly Dog: Feb 21st 2007 – 15th April 2021
Today we sadly lost Polly, a rescue Cocker, who was with us for 14 of her 16 years. She has gone to join Biggles and Windsor and Newbury and Patsy and it’s the end of what has been a very happy, loving relationship. For the first time in almost three decades, there is a total…
Newmarket 3 Cheltenham 2
The tips for today’s TV racing are here. Very brief. Will explain more tomorrow.
Newmarket Day 2 Cheltenham April
What a lovely thing to see young Jack Mitchell power ahead yesterday in the 3:55. He was always a good little jockey even when a kid doing Shetland Grand National, but he has really become very stylish. I just happened to see his ride yesterday and he has a good pair of hands but more…
Lumme – It’s Newmarket and the Classic trials already!
The Golf was not horrendous and for a brief moment, I thought Hideki might falter, allowing Jordan a chance. However, like the coward that I am, I greened out at the end of the 2nd round, losing my favourite Korean Im in the cut, but with five going through to the final 36, I thought…
We should all give thanks. RIP HRH Prince Philip
Yesterday, part of the Oxfordshire internet went out and cut the Chateau d’If off from the rest of the world. By standing on the roof of a car, holding onto a branch, I regretfully managed to get the tips out, (sorry), and thus I heard the sad news. It was impossible to ignore the woeful…
Grand National Meeting Day 2
Yesterday, or rather the very early morning, started badly, as I found myself working in the very early hours to meet an 08.00 deadline. I crashed out about 03.30 and then had Madame’s always fun re-enactment of Reveille in the English lines on the Eve of Waterloo. She plays all the parts, including saddling the…
Aintree Day 1 and a medical opinion
I exercise a great deal of caution about wandering around the village these days, for fear of being accosted, and then denounced, as an agent of the Left, Right, Rich, Poor, Workers, Fascists, Communists, Idlers, and people of … “insert your Woke word of choice”. Yesterday I had written a letter and missed my hugely…
The Masters 2021
I know it only seems like six months ago, (it was), that the Augusta National Golf Club gave the Green Jacket to Dustin Johnson and, as a result, he’ll be hosting the annual Defending Champions dinner, an event at which only Green Jacket holders can attend. He gets to choose the menu and I have…
The GN Trends
AGE 24/29 (14/17) Aged 9 or older BETTING 23/29 – Returned a double-figure price 21/29 – Came from outside the top 3 in the betting CLASS 28/29 (15/17) OR 137 > 20 / 20 OR 136+ 22/29 Carries 10-13 or less 20 / 20 Carries 10-3 20 / 20 Carried at least 10st 10lbs LTO…
Easter Monday, Lockinge and Irish Craic
We didn’t start Easter thinking we’d be saying goodbye to Richard Johnson, who retires upright and walking, and capable of a new full and productive life. He has become a role model of sobriety, charm, sportsmanship and common sense – which we know because he has garnered universal acclaim from all quarters, on the news….
Putting the wheels back on the Gravy Train
Many of you will know the music of the much-inked Rag’n Bone Man, and especially his hit lament called “(I’m Only) Human”. A reviewer said of it, possibly in a desperate attempt to be republished in Private Eye’s Pseuds Corner; Rag’n’Bone man speaks for all of us when he expresses his guilt, sadness, and wanting…
AWT Championships? Hasn’t Jesus suffered enough on Good Friday?
Good Friday, and Europe is awash with Fiestas and Fetes celebrating Holy Week. It’s a time of year when I might reasonably consider that the seasons were changing and that I needn’t be in-country a moment longer. It’s a much-hackneyed phrase, but this year I really do get the feeling that “spring is in the…
Did Cheltenham week sound an alarm for you?
If I’m honest, the first couple of days of Cheltenham were spent in a state of bewilderment. Despite God and Government, we were alive although marooned, blamed, alone, vaccinated, yet still incapable of sharing a glass, and throughout it all, still watching some superb racing performances. Racing TV covered the races in a professional, engaging…
They’re Off!
A two-parter this week – Tips and comment on Cheltenham. This first, though, as they’re almost OFF for the first day of the 2021 Flat season. Also The tips for The Dubai World Cup and the first race of the 2021 Grand Prix season. Talking of wheels almost certainly coming off, here is the tip…
Mothering Sunday, Cheltenham, Knackering Saturday
On my knees, despite eight hours of sleep and a working man’s breakfast. Only just midday, and I have already had a business meeting; given sound client advice; cocked-up the results of a Cheltenham tipping competition; accidentally kicked the dog and had the man with the angle grinder arrive to start some spring-time repointing and…
Cheltenham Day 4
One of my readers, the one who doesn’t live in North Wales, sent a note to remind me that Beau Geste, who I mentioned yesterday, died at his post. He asked if I was, like Beau, considering doing the decent thing, should my Cheltenham failure continue. Trust me, Mr Scrote-Boggis of Pinworm Villas, everyone here…