The Olympic Gold Shergar Blog

Well we're almost at the end of a fantastic Olympics where GB have won an almost unprecedented number of gold medals - mostly in sports that require sitting down.   Team GB's success has inspired me to attempt to emulate their willpower and dedication.....so I've been practising sitting down a lot more!  I have been totally glued to the TV to the exclusion of almost everything else.  When you've seen a man run half his 400m leg with.....half his 400m leg (his leg broke at around the 200m mark), a horse bouncing in time to the Dambusters tune and kids on bikes winning gold medals then I think we can consider ourselves well and truly entertained! 

Real !

At Chez Sandi, we have gold medal contenders for the following should they ever become Olympic sports:  BMX (Bloody Marvellous X-Rays - 3 armbreaks in one year is the current record held by my son!), Dress(your)age,  Shoe-do and Fridge Raiding (Nocturnal stealth category).  

Now Ascot are holding their own annual Olympics - the Shergar Cup.  I'm warming to this annual event, I have to admit.  For the uninitiated, top jockeys from across the world fly in to Blighty so that the Great Britain & Ireland team can beat compete against three other teams at Ascot in 6 races.   They are up against Europe, the 'Rest of the World' and for the first time......an all female team.  John McCririck will be having kittens!  Rides have been allocated randomly by draw and racing starts early at 12:55.  

I have it on good authority that the overseas jocks are being put up in the luxurious Cowarth Park Hotel with it's own equestrian centre and polo academy.  At least they have a bolt hole nearby when the 80's entertainment starts and before they get

rolled by Rick Astley.

  

The Ladies Hayley Turner (cpt) Chantal Sutherland and Emma Jane Wilson are the ladies and are rather predictably wearing pink silks.

The Rest of the World are in yellow and comprise of Yutake Take (cpt), Aaron Gryder and Matthew Chadwick.  

Europe are wearing blue and have Frankie Dettori (cpt), Cristian Demuro (Mirco's baby brother and 2011 Italian champion jockey) and Andreas Suborics.

Finally GB & Ireland are in green silks and are made up of Kieren Fallon (cpt), Johnny Murtagh and James Doyle. 


Tomorrow evening's noms shall be in honour of the winners, so if GB & Ireland win, it's fish & chips, Europe means pizza, ROTW a Chinese or indian and a Ladies team win means chocolate, Ben &Jerrys and a chickflick....come on girls!

I've had a good look at the 6 race card and because each race is so open, I have 2 picks for most (Dutching! That'll be on the Europe team then?) 

This is what I have come up with:

ASCOT
12:55	Stevie Thunder	Mull Of Killough
13:30	Lyric Street	Astral Thunder  e/w
14:05	Steps
14:40	Repeater	Rule Book  e/w
15:15	Ittirad	John Louis
15:50	Big Note	Lady Gorgeous  e/w

Well!  It was fun to watch anywau and it's Indian takeaway tonight.....

A couple of Saturdays ago, I was doing some housekeeping to my Outlook email folders and quickly scanning through my junk folder before emptying/deleting the contents, I spied a couple of emails from the Racing Post.  First email: I had tickets for that day's meeting at York WAHAY!.  Second email:  If we don't hear from you by 2 days ago, we'll offer them to another.....WAAAH!  

York is about a 2 hour drive, it was 07:30am and I have a fast car and a hat.  

So I phoned the customer services number provided (not really expecting a reply at stupid o'clock) and spoke to a lovely chap called Alastair who told me that yes indeed, the tickets had found a new home.  No matter, I thought as I swore at my over-zealous junk filter and I rattled off an email of thanks and apologies for my unintentional ignorance.  Monday morning, I received an email from RP asking for my postal address as they would like to send me Richard Hughes new autobiography to soften the disappointment.  Nice peeps so they are.

I have (like many) several horses that I will religiously back whenever they run.  Usually this is because of the 'potential' they showed when they were younger and despite never realising this potential, I daren't ignore a run as this WILL be the one occasion when they will win at big odds....even if the distance, going, jockey often is identical to that of previous losing runs!  These are known as 'cliff horses' (as in you would follow them over one) but can also be known by the names "Usain Colt", "Space War", "Boris Grigoriev" (running today at Redcar 15:100 and "Valery Borzov".  If I back any of these, then this is a sure fire jinx but I think I have a solution to this problem! I shall set up an alert to send an email to a friend whenever one of these are running and said friend will put on a bet on my behalf.  I'll let you know how this plan goes but I wouldn't hold your breath...