3 N.H. meetings in the U.K.

There is no flat racing today in the U.K., but 3 meetings over jumps, which seems too much of a good thing and certainly, with some large fields, stretches the jockey situation to the limit. Champion Tony McCoy solves this problem by riding at 2 meetings and after riding Barizan for Evan Williams in the first race at Stratford, a novice hurdle for 3yo´s, rushes off to Southwell for two later rides for Jonjo O´Neill. Stratford has the best racing and Ruby Walsh rides in Britain for the first time since his ankle injury more than 2 months ago. he has 2 rides for Paul Nicholls, Now Listen to Me in the novice chase at 17.40 and Quell the Storm in the novice hurdle half an hour later. Both have chances, but we hope to see two German-breds successful in these races, Donaldson (Jonjo O´Neill/ Noel Fehily) and Vacario (Charlie Mann/ Fehily) respectively. Ruby also rides top-weight Jubilant Note for Mike Murphy in the valuable handicap chase at 16.30, but this looks a really tough ra ce and we are not sure that he can concede so much weight to Master Nimbus and Mibleu. At Southwell we expect to see ex-German Early Wings (Caroline Bailey/ Andrew Thornton) run well in the handicap chase at 16.55 after running placed 4 times running, while McCoy´s flying visit should also be fruitful. At the Scottish track Perth the Irish raiders have a good record and Goirdon Elliott in particular seems to have several winning chances; we would not be surprised to see him win the first 3 races on Desert Storm, Buachaill on Eirne and Backstage, all partnered by Jason Maguire.