With the scheduled meetings on Saturday at Ffos Las, Sedgefield and Wincanton all lost to the weather, we are left with the two All Weather meetings at Kempton(subject to an inspection) and Lingfield, where the Scoop 6 roll-over will take place. It’s a similar story for Sunday with only Southwell potentially going ahead. With this in mind there are a couple of new topics on the horse racing forum including a trial of an All Weather Backing System which is perfect timing for the current situation.

It’s all a far cry from the spectacle we witnessed on Boxing Day where we were treated to a record performance by the mighty Kauto Star!!!! Not only did he live up to the pre-race billing but absolutely annihilated a quality field by over a distance. Channel 4 reported over 1.2million viewers tuned in to watch the race, and the performance and publicity can only be great for the future of racing.

As you may know from my previous articles one of the main attractions of National Hunt racing is that the stars stay in the game season after season, as opposed to the Flat where the good ones get whisked of to stud duties as soon as possible.

Hopefully the current bad weather passes quickly and before it has affect on the preparations of the horses to feature in the climax of the season with the Championship meeting at Cheltenham in March, quickly followed by the Grand National during the second weekend of April. During the next few weeks I will be taking a closer look at the main contenders for the big races at these two meetings and potentially highlighting a few winners, so remember to keep checking back as the build up begins.

Happy Punting