Based on yesterday's results at Newmarket, if u have somethin in the Cambridgeshire u'll be lookin for somethin to come down either rail (avoid the middle) ....yesterday there was a clear bias towards the lowly drawn horses who break well and make the pace...high draw untested but should have adv over those in the middle. I'll only be havin a small fun bet on it coz too many cul-de-sacs to trap u in runnin.

After wathin them a while I was worried they wouldn't win by 61 but was pretty sure they'd win by more than 49 so backed them at that price to cut my loss on the initial bet. They managed to squeeze past the 61 so all was well. I would have been gutted if I hadn't have backed them at -49. Hope that makes sense.

Anyways, on to today. Had Cueto to score anytime at 1/2. England -54.5 @4/5 and got two doubles with England having completed the first leg....have New Zealand at -7 in one and -12 in the other so this is where the wheels come off and the French blow me out of the water!!!

I was on -61 @ evens pre-kickoff, didn't like what I was watchin 1st half (sloppy handling) so backed em again - 49 @ 4/5 just to cover a bit...thankfully they hit a purple patch and sealed it by a point with a conversion! Had visions of it going agonisingly wide like the first two in the first half.

Thankfully, last I heard Anthony Faingaa was 'ok' after that horrible collision in the last minute.

Fell asleep so didn't get on which I don't mind coz I wasn't too happy with the handicap. Woke up just before half time then fell asleep just before the end. They weren't as clinical as they could have been but ran out easy winners when their neighbours tired and started to miss tackles.

I do think we've seen some exceptional athletes down the years who were/are clean but some athletes/performances just stink to high heaven. Michael Johnson is one of the greatest athletes of all time and he was very vocal during his career about drug abuse in the sport and distanced himself from cheats like Butch Reynolds (didn't want to run on same relay team...if memory serves...unlike athletes who protest against 'foreign' cheats like the Brit athletes who made a show of themselves while Yegerova ran...yet are quiet of a mouse when the dirty athlete is wearing the same club/country vest).

I hope Bolt is clean...if he's one of the cheats (of which there are many...Ben Johnson was right when he said he wasn't alone in 'that race') then I hope he retires soon and doesn't get caught. I just wouldn't bet on it.

That said, I still LOVE watching the sport (grew up watching Coe and Ovette so spoiled as a kid re British success) Footballers 'cheat' in every match but we still watch.

Re your tickets, I'm VERY jealous. Hope you witness one of the great 100m finals including a head to head between a fit Bolt v Gay.

Enjoy!

Interested to know what anyone thinks re the Springboks v Namibia in the mornin. With their handling they should beat the -59 @ evens with Hills. I was much more confident when gettin on the All Blacks in their match v Japan, there's a niggling feelin that they may just take their foot off the gas second half....thoughts anyone? Be interested to know what other bets are about...

Linford was done for cheating as was Ottey...sometimes the doped athletes get out before they're caught (Flo-Jo), sometimes their federations cover up their positive tests (Carl lewis) and sometimes they're so stupid they believe they'll never get caught and can just carry on selling people the bs line about 'better training' and 'natural talent' till they get caught (Marion Jones, Ben Johnson, Butch Reynolds...this list is endless!).

That's not to say that Jamaica have suddenly produced a whole crop of men AND women (rather than a spattering of talented individuals like Ray Stewart) who are clean in a very 'dirty era'. Anyone who believes the sport is clean at the top level is living in a dreamworld.

Given the fact so many athletes worldwide have been proven cheats it's difficult not to be sceptical about these miracle performances. I hope Bolt gets out before he gets caught if he is cheating (which I don't think is that big an 'if'...).

We should be setting an example on this front. The likes of Chambers and Ohurugu who both cheated (one messed up his screening agent so failed a test, the other dodged the testers) should be barred from competing for Britain at every champs (Olympic and Worlds) instead of taking the limelight and robbing clean athletes....Chambers robbed many a title from Jason Gardner and god knows how much in sponsorship deals and Ohurugu denied Nicola Sanders a gold medal at the World Champs.

Bolt clean? Not a chance IMO...nothing abot his performances/improvement looks clean (Assuming he's clean, what time would he run 'dirty' bearing in mind so many of the top times have been discredited over the years,,,times he's already made look shockingly ordinary!)...best thing he can do is rinse the game for the next Olympics and World Champs then retire before he messes up his masking routine or get grassed on like Marion Jones.

I hope he is clean BUT I can't bring myself to really believe it. In a 'bullet to the brain test' if I was wrong in answering 'clean' v 'dirty' I'd have to say he was dirty (along with the majority of elite performers...sad but that's where my vote would be goin.) Just my opinion after seeing the sport I LOVE badly smeared by a whole host of 'all time greats'.

haha when my brother told me the time he ran I had to laugh...I'd still back Fredricks, MJ, Crawford, Lewis, Marsh, Greene, Boldon and a whole bunch of others against Dix!! Athletics is my favourite sport but the thing's been seriously corrupted from way back!!

Massive result and thoroughly deserved!

I hear ya, we've had faulty timings in the past which is why I questioned it in my first reply. Dix is no Tyson Gay!

Anyone else on Ireland in this? +12 @ evens with Hills lookin ok so far!

If that clocking is correct (allowing for wind etc.) then it's just symptomatic of what's wrong with athletics at elite level. The Jamaican's are quite obviously as chemically enhanced as any group of international athletes fin the history of the sport. To think that MJ would be eating dust from Blake is too too silly! They've probably got 12yr olds in a lab who'd walk into our 4X100 squad. Carl Lewis will be at home griding his teeth!

lol, this is just silly. Standards in all sports are improving all the time. MJ was incredible but there will come a time when all elite athletes are running faster than he could. Chemically enhanced?? I´m not sure I understand. You mean good nutrition?

Silly? I don't think so. The evidence speaks for itself when u look through the all-time list of sprinters and the times posted and then delete the ones who've been guilty of cheating. The Jamaican's (along with the Chinese) have a notoriously lame dope testing programme.

I'm guessin  u'd have said the same prior to the expose involving the likes of Drummond/Mitchell/Gatlin/Montgomery/ and half a dozen second string Jamaicans (men and women). I'm not naive enough to expect athletes to perform clean but that doesn't mean I have to swallow the garbage explanations they give for 'great' performances surrounding the likes of Marion Jones (ie, 'better' training regimes and faster tracks...I'm guessin u'd have said my attitudes to Marion Jones' performances were 'silly' too!).

The Jamaican atheletes have cut their PB's in just the same fashion that Flo Jo did...one year they're an also-ran the next they're chopping over half a second off their PB's and breaking world records for fun.

IMO anyone who genuinely believes that Bolt et al are clean is in need of a reality check.

If that clocking is correct (allowing for wind etc.) then it's just symptomatic of what's wrong with athletics at elite level. The Jamaican's are quite obviously as chemically enhanced as any group of international athletes fin the history of the sport. To think that MJ would be eating dust from Blake is too too silly! They've probably got 12yr olds in a lab who'd walk into our 4X100 squad. Carl Lewis will be at home griding his teeth!

Well after speaking to a manager and getting a bit of a cheeky/sarcastic response I've decided not to bet with them again! I'm only small fry in terms of sports betting (few hundred wagered over course of this championships) so they can get away with treating me in shoddy fashion. Still can't believe they put money into my account then took it back out and didn't seem to acknowledge how far a small good will gesture would have gone. Instead of slating them off to mates, I'd have said they'd atleast valued my custom after making an unfortunate error.

On the upside, the bet I had straight after on Hills is lookin ok so far.

gl anyone else who's tryin to squeeze out a profit on the Daegu action.