You’d have to say that last weekend was rather a good one for Irish racing, with over 16,000 at the National at Fairyhouse on Monday and 6,000 plus at Cork on Sunday.

Those who love flat racing, and there are plenty of us, can only pray that Kingman and Australia take each other on in the English 2000 Guineas at Newmarket on Saturday, May 3.

The Punchestown festival will see the end of the National Hunt season in the dying days of this month and into early May.

You’d love to have been sitting behind the Ballydoyle contingent on the plane back from Dubai last weekend.

If watching the Aidan O’Brien horses gallop after racing at the Curragh on Sunday, and took what was on offer at face value, then there is no way you would want to be with Australia this season.

It is only when one sat down to watch the race in peace and quiet that you began to fully appreciate the ride Davy Russell gave Lord Windermere in the Cheltenham Gold Cup.

If Sam Twiston-Davies isn’t a star of the future then I’ll eat my hat. Following the Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham on Tuesday he was inconsolable, but the young man had little about which to beat himself up.

Someone once defined a pessimist as an informed optimist, and here’s a scribbler who can readily identify with such a description on the lead-in to Cheltenham.

Wasn’t the racing in Ireland last weekend desperately disappointing? What is happening in the National Hunt game in this country is simply turning punters off.

The ex-French mare Adriana Des Mottes, who created a very favourable impression on her Irish debut, gets the nap in the Grade 2 Winning Fair Juvenile Hurdle at Fairyhouse this afternoon.