Congratulations Ffos Las Backstage and Gordon Elliott

It was great to watch some quality jumps racing in August (!), from Ffos Las, wtih Backstage showing once again what an astute trainer Gordon Elliott is. It was a quality field spoilt only by the fact there were only half a dozen in the handicap proper. The course has received good feedback and I wish them all the success for the future.

Well I have sent off my cheque for One Jump Ahead and Jumping Prospects and updated my horse notes from the Racing Post Open Day reports, (although there wasn't much new information).

The Arkle and the RSA are looking very competitive events and although I have had a bet on Crack Away Jack, (he was only just below Champion Hurdle class but connections always saw him as a chaser), for the former it really is way too early to have any interest in either event. We need to see how horses jump at speed for the former and jump and stay for the latter and the attrition rate particulalry for the RSA Chase can be very high. I remember the early betting on the RSA last year and of the first 20 in the betting only 4 lined up, although the eventual winner Cooldine was joint 16/1 favourite. Without doing too much work I already have a list of eight runners I am interested in for the RSA Chase and as for the Arkle we may not have seen the winner on an English or Irish track yet! Add to that the betting markets are very immature and weak so there is no real edge to be had.

I had a minor scare with my web-site (www.Cheltenhamchampions.com) when returning from a short break found it had ceased to exist! Fortunatley it was due to "a short outage on one of the servers" of my hosting company (whatever that means). Anyway all is back to normal now.

I am not a football fan but do enjoy trading to very small stakes and have made a small profit on a couple of games already this season. As is often the case it pays to bet against the perceived general wisdom. For instance if the general view is there will be a goal fest check out what the spread firms have set the total goals market and trade on betfair the "under x goals" market where x is the mid point of the spread price.