Cheltenham 12/3/26 - Buy The Sky, Sell The Sky

Again, it's late, I'm tired and we've only got Europa League stuff on tonight so it'll be a very quick run through before I hit the hay.

Most of the morning was spent huddling over various rain radars, switching between optimism that it might pass north and pessimism that it wasn't going to. The weather was coming from just over the paddock from our perspective, we gazed in that direction with increased frequency, up at the sky, not down at the runners.

Guinea Pigs rather than bookmakers at around 10:45 as the rain came in but the wind was at the "I could turn you inside out" when it came to brollies and we all waited to see who would be first to open the canopy. We tried putting it up for 10 minutes and, despite us being solidly tethered down, the sail effect of said mush brought in Mary Poppins vibes. We took it down. Or, if you like, "choose not to do" You're welcome JohnN (and anyone else with a penchant for REM album tracks)

1) Weather really poor and turnover low - didn't take much then to turn what looked like a monster result into a pretty modest start and that's how it turned out. Winner was nibbled at both on and off course and, generally speaking, big wins would probably have required exchange intervention which we tend to avoid where possible. Small win and the feeling that we'd missed out.

2) Couldn't keep them off the winner, MeetMeByTheSea and we hit a max loss. Difficult start in terms of weather, turnover and performance.

3) No escaping Wodhooh and another maximum loss for us. Frustrating that the fast finishing jackpot, Jade De Grugy jumped sketchily, particularly at the first. We had the week's expenses last night, we didn't now.

4) Stood Teahupoo and Ballyburn and got decent reward on Home By The Lee and we avoided the sticky place bogeys as well. A la yesterday our main disappointment was the overall take on what was a virtual skinner. Back to parity in the book.

5) Withdrawal of Fact to File helped the place book and overall make up of the race but hit turnover on an already hit and miss day. Couldn't get Jonbon in no matter how we tried until a late chunk - it was still a small winner but book was bit more balanced than at 3:59. Best winner in the book with Heart Wood and standing the bottom 3 for plenty in the place market gave us a further top up when Jonbon snagged JPR One for 2nd.

6) We don't tend to have an opinion but it was hard to ignore this. Langer Dan 3.0 rocked up and we weren't going to stand it. I'm sure more learned people than me will write more words about it than me but it's not a fun look to see the same race played out in front of you on a very regular basis. Not sure anyone enjoys watching that unless you've lumped on. I may be wrong. We won but didn't feel terribly good about it.

7) Stood 5 of them including Road to Home who breezed past our jackpot, Ask Brewster, only for a minor miracle to happen and we had a cracking finish. Not Brewster's Millions but enough to send us home happy.

Not enough turnover to truly cash in on a few results today but we do move forward on a difficult day and have a free swing (and a bit more) going into tomorrow. Double bubble blog on Sunday with Gold Cup Day and, of course, the big one at Newcastle on Saturday.

Until then...