Sunday, September 05, 2010

Weekend snippets

Cape Blanco (6/1) provided something of a shock at Leopardstown yesterday by making all to win the Irish Champion Stakes by five and a half lengths from stablemate Rip Van Winkle with Twice Over a short head behind in third.

Tony McCoy has been in fine form this weekend with a treble at Worcester today on Another Trump (3/1), Pinerock (3/1) and Drill Sergeant (10/11f) to add to his victory on Russian George (3/1) at Stratford yesterday. The winning distances in two of those events were recorded as a short head and a head - McCoy has ridden four winners from seven rides since Friday.

BBC4 screen This Sporting Life this evening at 10.00pm, a film that's a particular favourite of mine. Richard Harris stars in the lead role as Frank Machin, a rugby league footballer from Wakefield.

As pointed out on Saturday's Morning Line, this Youtube clip has gone viral... A race caller at Monmouth in the US had a bit of fun when two horses fought out a finish, one named My Wife Knows Everything, the other named The Wife Doesn't Know. Needless to say, My Wife Knows Everything came out the winner (because she actually does).

Two poetry points to finish on. Firstly, I was intrigued to learn over the weekend that poet John Cooper Clarke is now on the GCSE syllabus - unfortunately that's thirty five years too late for me. Secondly, here's a poem by John Masefield (1878-1967), who was on the O level syllabus (as it was known) thirty five years ago...

An Epilogue

I have seen flowers come out in stony places
And kind things done by men with ugly faces,
And the Gold Cup won by the worst horse at the races,
So I trust, too.

3 comments:

GeeDee said...

No problem, Lee.

Sandracer said...

The wife knows you know.

GeeDee said...

Indeed, Sandracer! How's things?

I'm going through another of those protracted periods (that have punctuated much of the past thirty years) when I can't find a winner.

Hoping for some slight improvement before Christmas but not holding my breath...