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As long as he has not won more than two contests over fences, graduation chases also remain a potentially lucrative option. gc

The reasoning for Nicholls' early blooding of 4yos over fences is correct, but the choice of horse to cite is not - Poquelin is already five, and was running off the same weight of 10-12 as everything else bar the mare on Tuesday night. I checked this not to score points, but to make sure...

Cheers, Colin! Yep, found my way onto this board as well at last - verily I am the racing forum equivalent of herpes. I'd been reading this forum for a while before the changes were made preventing non-members from so doing, but - inevitably - it took a couple of threads on summer jumping and...

All true. The only possible drawback I have thought of to this practice is that it means the horses involved will more often than not be encumbered with a penalty when they reappear against the better animals in the autumn. Then again, presumably the thinking is that they are going to make up...

Spot on - the Mackenzie and Harris annual is never backward in highlighting which courses are situated on ancient turf, and mostly talks of these racing surfaces in comparatively glowing terms. I'm not in front of my annual right now and can't recall any examples off the top of my head (how very...

Long trips to Lower Machen, Hackwood Park, Cheltenham and Towcester for me in the last 10 days... no wonder Mrs Column despairs. Definitely doing Stratford on the Friday of the two-day meeting, with tentative trips to Cartmel, Larkhill and back to Towcester either side of that still to be...

In the interests of anorakdom, I'll remind you all that the last jumps-free summer was 1994. Then, as in the few years prior to that, it was Bangor on the last Friday in July that kicked off the jumps season rather than Newton Abbot. Looking even further back, Newton Abbot used to share the...

Given that; - there is an ever greater defined programme of classy handicaps run during the summer months, including the Summer Plate, Summer Hurdle, Summer National, Bluesq.com Chase and Lord Mildmay Chase, plus numerous recognised trials for these contests (at up to 0-135 grading), - the...

Of course they do. And Jonjo O'Neill and Peter Bowen in particular have seen summer jumping as a logical and credible extension of the season. Bear in mind that Bowen's base in Pembrokeshire must be among the furthest flung of all major training operations in the country. With the summer...

I'm not sure whether point-to-pointing is answerable going-wise in the same way as Rules racing is. In so far as Hard - an unacceptable state of going over jumps since summer jumping-precipitated watering edicts were laid down in 1995 - still occasionally appears at pointing venues late in the...

A new Magnetic Fields album? Heaven be thanked! 69 Love Songs was one of the most ambitious - and at the same time least pompous - concept albums ever. That's one more entry added to my spiralling "to buy" list, then... gc

If memory serves he tried to play the "does anyone like him?" card on Have I Got News for You once upon a time, viz; PIERS: "Don't come that way with me Hislop.... I mean [to audience], does anyone here actually like him?" (general murmurs of "yes we do" from the audience) PAUL MERTON: "That...