?Hugh Hen­der­son

In our lo­cal horse rac­ing world, giv­en the small horse pop­u­la­tion and not many race days, it is usu­al at this time of the year to start pre­dict­ing the var­i­ous cat­e­go­ry win­ners of the an­nu­al Jet­sam Awards. As at No­vem­ber 4, the Open Jock­ey Cham­pi­onship is up for grabs and should make the re­main­ing race days most in­ter­est­ing. Bri­an Boodram­s­ingh leads the ta­ble with 29 wins, fol­lowed by ap­pren­tice Ki­ran Raza­ck (25); vet­er­ans Ricky Jadoo and No­bel Abrego (23 each) and peren­ni­al cham­pi­on Bri­an Hard­ing (20). The next in line is Richard Perez (15) fol­lowed by Ron Ali (13); Nicholas Patrick (12), and for­mer cham­pi­on Nela Mo­hammed (11), who has re­cov­ered nice­ly from in­jury and has set him­self a goal of 20 win­ners for 2011 rid­ing both lo­cal­ly and on oc­ca­sion in Guyana.

Raza­ck will ob­vi­ous­ly be cham­pi­on ap­pren­tice and all cred­it to him for work­ing hard to im­prove his work habits. Will he catch Boodram­s­ingh for the Open ti­tle?Train­er John O'Brien has sad­dled 49 win­ners, many more than his near­est com­peti­tors Der­rick Mosca (30) and Glenn Mendez (22) so to a great ex­tent will in­flu­ence the even­tu­al cham­pi­on jock­ey as Boodram­s­ingh, Abrego and Hard­ing all ride for his sta­ble when the for­eign­ers are not avail­able.Fes­ti­val Day on De­cem­ber 3 may well be a crit­i­cal day for lo­cal rid­ers com­pet­ing for the cham­pi­on's ti­tle as sev­er­al top for­eign jock­eys are ex­pect­ed to ride the bet­ter hors­es to like­ly vic­to­ries.

The up­com­ing Year­ling Sale

It is en­cour­ag­ing to hear on­go­ing "talk" that the Year­ling Sale on No­vem­ber 20 is ex­pect­ed to be a suc­cess and that about 50 per­sons at­tend­ed the Open House at Poon Tip Stud farm on Oc­to­ber 16, show­ing much in­ter­est.As with every­thing in life, a pos­i­tive mind­set is nec­es­sary for any goal to be achieved and I plead with present and would-be own­ers, to in­vest in lo­cal year­lings to keep our breed­ing in­dus­try go­ing. Two ex­cit­ing fac­tors in this year's sale are (a) the num­ber of stal­lions (21) rep­re­sent­ed in­clud­ing well-bred new­com­ers Moy­gad­dy, Maraa­hel, Gold Mar­ket and Cha­ras­mat­ic Cat with 36 year­lings be­tween them, which cre­ates all sorts of new equa­tions re­gard­ing the pos­si­ble ge­net­ic com­bi­na­tions (speed, sta­mi­na, sound­ness, con­for­ma­tion, size) with their re­spec­tive mares.

Proven stal­lions Big Coun­try, Ba­bel, West­ern En­voy and Pre­cise Sweep ac­count for an­oth­er 38 year­lings so with such a lot­tery to se­lect from, the bid­ding should be fast and fu­ri­ous (b) Of the 111 year­lings list­ed, for the first time in my mem­o­ry there is a big dif­fer­ence in the num­ber of fil­lies (66) and colts (45), which means in the­o­ry that if you buy a colt, you will have less com­pe­ti­tion to deal with and if you pur­chase a fil­ly you prob­a­bly have a bet­ter chance of your horse reach­ing the track since you can take time to en­sure she is prop­er­ly de­vel­oped and trained.

One of the ma­jor con­sid­er­a­tions in study­ing the sale cat­a­logue is ap­pre­ci­at­ing the Lot num­bers of the year­lings you fan­cy and try­ing to an­tic­i­pate where the po­ten­tial sales top­pers are placed in the line up. Is your cho­sen year­ling be­tween Lot 1 and Lot 15 (ear­ly buy­ers); Lot 75 to the end (most buy­ers have al­ready gone home) or be­tween Lot 15 and Lot 75 (where bid­ding will be most com­pet­i­tive)? I al­ways place each year­ling in one of Cat­e­go­ry "A" (prob­a­ble 10 most in de­mand and ex­pen­sive); "B" (10 run­ner-ups to "A"); "C" (a good buy to have fun with but prob­a­bly not a Clas­sic con­tender for what­ev­er rea­son); and "D" (not in­ter­est­ed).

Good luck to the or­gan­is­ers for nice weath­er and to the buy­ers who by 5 pm on No­vem­ber 20, "know for a fact" they have pur­chased the 2013 Der­by win­ner.

Eng­lish foot­ball

The Bar­clay's Pre­mier League is in full swing with Man­ches­ter City tak­ing an ear­ly lead. The un­par­al­leled suc­cess his­to­ry of Man­ches­ter Unit­ed foot­ball club is "some­thing else", so it was quite a bomb­shell re­cent­ly when lo­cal city ri­vals Man­ches­ter City beat them 6-1, ap­par­ent­ly the first time in 81 years any team had pumped six goals past Unit­ed. Man­ag­er Sir Alex Fer­gu­son called it the worst day of his nev­er end­ing (25 years) ca­reer at Old Traf­ford, and watch­ing the game on TV, I could not blame him.

It must have been es­pe­cial­ly galling to be so hu­mil­i­at­ed by City of all teams! I clear­ly re­mem­ber in 1958, when the then "Bus­by Babes" (Man­ag­er Matt Bus­by) crashed on a re­turn flight from Mu­nich and sev­er­al "won­der kids" like 18 year old Dun­can Ed­wards died.My broth­er Chris, who was a ra­bid Man U fan even back then, was dev­as­tat­ed for years af­ter and can still tell you every play­er in­volved in the plane crash. I was most wor­ried that the 6-1 loss would have a neg­a­tive ef­fect on Chris, who that very week un­der­went ma­jor heart surgery but I don't think his wife told him the re­sult!

Thank­ful­ly, Chris is back home and re­cov­er­ing well but I know Wayne Rooney, Nani and team mates can has­ten his re­turn to good health with some im­me­di­ate vic­to­ries!I have to ad­mit that while I have al­ways ad­mired Man U as a team, Fer­gu­son would not be my favourite din­ner guest. His per­son­al­i­ty (if that's what it is called) does not "grab" me and the same goes for an­oth­er fa­mous coach, Jose Mour­in­ho. Both seem in­ca­pable of con­struct­ing an in­ter­est­ing sen­tence, both seem to have ice run­ning through their veins and both have to make a su­per hu­man ef­fort to crack even a half- smile.

Dar­ren Bra­vo's maid­en cen­tu­ry

Last week I sub­mit­ted an ar­ti­cle which was not print­ed due to a mix-up, but giv­en Dar­ren Bra­vo's 195 against Bangladesh, I hope must some com­ments.It is al­ways in­ter­est­ing to re­flect on ups and downs in sport, and I take Ravi Ram­paul and Dar­ren Bra­vo as cur­rent crick­et ex­am­ples. As a teenag­er, Ram­paul en­joyed a fab­u­lous ca­reer and the best and great­est fu­ture was pre­dict­ed for him. Some­how it did not work out and for the next five years or so, Ram­paul did not ex­act­ly fall off the radar screen but his crick­et went from "ex­tra­or­di­nary" to "very or­di­nary".

Then 2011 comes along and a new, fit Ram­paul re­turns to the scene with on­go­ing ex­cel­lent per­for­mances that have now made him al­most an au­to­mat­ic se­lec­tion on WI team.I am so hap­py for him and re­al­ly en­joy watch­ing him on TV run­ning in to bowl with ob­vi­ous en­er­gy, pur­pose and ex­pec­ta­tion. He is an ad­mirable role mod­el for re­mind­ing young­sters nev­er to give up be­liev­ing in them­selves. Bra­vo on the oth­er hand end­ed last year on top of the world but 2011 has been a dis­ap­point­ment, dis­play­ing his rare bat­ting tal­ent on­ly oc­ca­sion­al­ly and not field­ing to ex­pec­ta­tions.

Ear­li­er in the year, I went pub­lic that Vi­rat Kohli of In­dia and Bra­vo were the two best young bats­men in world crick­et, but while Kohli goes from strength to strength, Bra­vo seems to have lost mo­men­tum, hope­ful­ly tem­porar­i­ly. I am sure Bra­vo will give cre­dence to the crick­et clich&ea­cute; that "class is class but form is tem­po­rary" and we will soon see a resur­gence of his beau­ti­ful strokes played with con­fi­dence and au­thor­i­ty."Well played Bra­vo-now on to even big­ger and bet­ter suc­cess­es.

West In­dies crick­et on the mind

I don't know about you, but the Chris Gayle-West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) saga has be­come too bor­ing, frus­trat­ing, em­bar­rass­ing and ridicu­lous for fur­ther com­ment. Some­thing must be wrong with all their brains, in­clud­ing Gayle's, if be­tween them they can­not de­cide what Gayle is sup­posed to apol­o­gise for and get it over with one way or the oth­er.In the first in­nings of the first WI-Bangladesh Test, cap­tain Dar­ren Sam­my scored his first Test 50 and as one of his harsh­est crit­ics in crick­et mat­ters, I of­fer sin­cere con­grat­u­la­tions.

In the sec­ond Test won by WI, Sam­my cap­tured his 50th Test wick­et so along with his sev­er­al very good catch­es dur­ing the year, I of­fer even more con­grats.I am gen­uine­ly pleased for Sam­my that he ac­tu­al­ly cap­tained a win­ning team be­cause ob­vi­ous­ly he ap­pears to be a very nice man and like all of us, needs recog­ni­tion and suc­cess.

Con­grats to West In­dies win­ning the sec­ond Test by so out­stand­ing a mar­gin (229 runs) pow­ered by Dar­ren Bra­vo's 195 and ex­cel­lent bowl­ing by De­ven­dra Bishoo and Fi­del Ed­wards. Beat­ing Bangladesh is not ex­act­ly scal­ing crick­et's Mt Ever­est but a win is a win so let's take it and run!

In the Re­gion­al Su­per 50's Tour­na­ment, nei­ther se­mi-fi­nal was worth watch­ing and the Fi­nal was even less at­trac­tive. Along the way, I ad­mired the bat­ting ap­proach of Ja­son Mo­hammed, the bowl­ing of Sunil Nar­ine and Veerasam­my Per­maul but could not help notic­ing the vir­tu­al­ly emp­ty stands at each game, which was the same sto­ry at the two WI-Bangladesh Tests.

Con­grat­u­la­tions Borel

Be­lat­ed but hearty con­grats to Cleopa­tra Borel for win­ning a sil­ver medal for shot put at the Pan Am Games. Great ef­fort and well de­served! We are very proud of you!