Where does the time go..

Tomorrow evening (Thursday) on Radio 5 live, there is a special on Frankie's Magnificent 7 that happened TWENTY years ago

remember it well.........

Mark of Esteem was the best of the horses, winning the QE2

Are going to talk to the bloke who had a bet on all of Frankies horses to win every race on that day

they've got the bookie on the show who lost over a million quid......

Gary Wilshire I think his name is..........he used to appear on TV racing quite a lot

Talking of multiples, you wouldn't believe the near miss I had today for a four figure sum.


The pain was very real, especially as Graceland hit the front inside the final furlong looking likely to prevail and rallied when the eventual winner Daphne drew upsides. Even the normally reliable Hoiles in commentary thought Graceland might have got back up, forcing my selection into favouritism on the photo betting, only for the subsequent print to reveal Daphne had won by the narrowest of margins.

Gutted is an understatement. That's gambling though, and you have to move on quickly. It's hard though as that money would have meant an awful lot to me.

Never was much of an Elvis fan...

What a bu**er

You'd rather it lost by a distance

Mrs DG bets for fun and does 10p E/W Lucky 15s daily. She's had her moments with these, including a couple of four-figure returns, but usually the best are in the £50-100 range when all four get in the frame at a decent price.

I think the most memorable was a Cheltenham L15 which included Lord Windemere and another big price winner, even without all four in the frame it still returned £500 or so.

Like you Dancc, she gets a bit twitchy when the first three come in and she wants the fourth for a nice payout.

Curiously, the good one yesterday included Daphne as the fourth horse. Swings and roundabout

At least Mrs DG did okay out of the race. Nice when those photo finishes go your way, agony otherwise, especially with a multiple riding on it in this case!

Two winners again today out of four so I continue in form, another beaten a nose (!) but the other one ran a stinker. Knocking on the door, but not sure whether it's quite going to open for me before the flat ends.

Good to see the Brocklesby winner from way back in the early days of the season winning the group one Middle Park

Surprising how often these Brocklesby winners turn out to be good horses despite every year the pundits say it didn't look like a good renewal

After my break from watching racing one of the first Brocklesby winners was Hearts of Fire about 7 years ago.......went on to win a group one in France

On the other side of the coin the horse that won the Brocklesby the following year was Chiswick Bey.......still racing and won a Seller last week

the ups and downs of the sport !

I was at Chester yesterday and in race 4, Flower of Love opened up at even money, and was never bigger in the live shows than 11/8. I backed Casablanca two minutes before the off and got 9/4.

Slightly astonished to find that Flower of Love won with an SP of 2/1, and Casablanca second at 11/8. If Id known I'd get 2/1 I'd have backed that horse as well to lock in almost certain profit on the basis it was more or less a two horse race.

Disgusting riding from Davy Russell at Clonmel today.

Not something that was easy to spot watching it live, but on the head-on which is still there on the ATR replay it's as clear as day what he did.

And to then have the nerve to protest at the stewards for rightly demoting his horse to 2nd and banning him a mere three days initially?

If it were up to me he'd have got a minimum of 6 months for that particular offense.

Lost all respect for him as a jockey.

What an Arc for Aiden O'Brien (and Gallileo) who got the 1-2-3

I managed to back Found as well

I'm assuming that's a first in Arc history? That's a phenomenal achievement

I think it was a very substandard Arc this year and also proved what a bad crop of 3 year olds we have had this year.

Great result for AOB though it does suggest it wasn't the strongest renewal. British runners did pretty well though in winning 4 out of the 7 races.

What a day it was for the British raiders generally. Only 1 French trained winner on Arc day- yikes!

EDIT: 2 actually. Forgot about the Arab race.

I'm not an expert on horse racing, but it seems to me that the changeover from flat to national hunt racing is occurring later and later every year. Can't believe we're midway through October and still Ch4 are showing flat racing from Ascot. Is this something to do with their being more money in flat racing - is N.H. dying a slow death?

I think it's more that nowadays with all weather racing over the winter and summer jumping both codes go pretty much all year round

I don't think this is late for flat racing

Traditionally the Flat season ended in early November with the November Meeting at Doncaster.......and that meeting would always have been televised

Also traditionally the Jumps meeting at Chepstow last Saturday would have been the first televised jumps meeting of the season so you'd have had 3/4 weeks where the season's overlapped for TV watchers

More generally.........Jumps racing is booming as a mainly British/Irish sport........us 'natives' have largely withdrawn from Flat racing (as owners) and left the top level (which gets televised) to the Arabs and Coolmore

The BBC traditionally always covered the Chepstow meeting for many years didn't they.

yes, it was always the first televised jumps meeting of the season.......featuring the Mercdes Benz handicap chase. I think they also showed a handicap hurdle, a novice chase and a quality novice hurdle

When you'd only been watching flat racing for months it was always really noticeable how slowly the jumps horses were running..... until you got used to the different pace of the races

Pretty worrying news from Ascot, where several trainers have been found with "substances" which may or may not be legal, or if legal not authorised for this meeting...could this mean that racing is fixed? shock horror

Did they do a "drugs test" on entry to the course?

Ruby won the US Grand National last night to add to his other National wins

http://www.skysports.com/racing/news...erican-version

Excellent day's racing at Ascot yesterday with the highlights being the unfashionably bred Almanzor establishing himself as the best 10f horse in training and Minding confirming she's the best miler in training. It is quite surprising that AOB has yet to win the Champion Stakes.

Neither has Frankie Dettori IIRC.

Moscow Flyer has died at the age of 22

I missed him racing as he came and went when I was on a long break from the sport but obviously I've seen the re-runs of his momentous battles with Well Chief and Azertyuiop

In fact Well Chief was still racing when I picked up interest again in around 2008 but the 'Flyer' had been retired for a couple of years