On Friday, the opening day of the Leopardstown Christmas Festival, Romeo Coolio defeated Irish Panther in a thrilling race to the finish line to claim the Grade One Novice Chase feature race.
The 8/14 favorite, who had been ridden by Jack Kennedy and trained by Gordon Elliott, held on for a half-length lead after two miles.
The horsemen had a three-length lead when they leapfrog the final fence, but the winner held on for good in the end to overthrow the leader.
He’s Gorgeous came in third place out of the nine runners, followed by July Flower.
When Elliott spoke to RTE after the race, “He’s a very tough horse, very honest, jumps great.”
“The horse had a great attitude,” the horse said.
The six-year-old had already shown promise in the two-mile hurdle race last year, winning Grade One gold at Leopardstown’s Dublin Racing Festival before taking the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle in Cheltenham and Aintree.
On Friday, the opening day of the Leopardstown Christmas Festival, Romeo Coolio defeated Irish Panther in a thrilling race to the finish line to claim the Grade One Novice Chase feature race.
The 8/14 favorite, who had been ridden by Jack Kennedy and trained by Gordon Elliott, held on for a half-length lead after two miles.
The horsemen had a three-length lead when they leapfrog the final fence, but the winner held on for good in the end to overthrow the leader.
He’s Gorgeous came in third place out of the nine runners, followed by July Flower.
When Elliott spoke to RTE after the race, “He’s a very tough horse, very honest, jumps great.”
“The horse had a great attitude,” the horse said.
The six-year-old had already shown promise in the two-mile hurdle race last year, winning Grade One gold at Leopardstown’s Dublin Racing Festival before taking the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle in Cheltenham and Aintree.
Some Strictly stars have some experience before them, but is this “cheating”? From West End work to latin competitions in the early 1980s?
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Should celebs with dance experience be banned from Strictly? Take our poll(Image: PA)
Whether it’s Amber Davies work on the stages of the West End, Lewis Cope and Karen Carney’s childhood dance competitions or Scarlett Moffat’s ballroom and latin training, fans have been arguing about whether prior dance experience counts as “cheating” on Strictly Come Dancing.
Throughout 2025’s series, there has been controversy surrounding whether or not celebs should be allowed to compete on the dance show if they have prior experience. Lewis Cope was at the centre of such drama early on in the series as fellow celeb Chris Robshaw’s wife seemed to suggest the Emmerdale star’s hip hop training was unfair to her husband.
“Proud forever. Up against people with years of experience when you’ve never even done a 2 step, opening the whole season and starting with one of the hardest dances going,” Camilla wrote on Instagram.
She also responded to a comment from former Love Island star Amber Gill, who said: “Unpopular opinion: I think having people with so much dance experience is unfair.”
But another fan said: “Controversial take, but I actually really love it when a contestant has dance experience. You get to see some really amazing iconic dances that we just wouldn’t have otherwise.” If you can’t see the poll below, click here.
Lewis’ experience was joined by Amber Davies’ theatre dance training and winner Karen’s childhood hip hop competitions. Some fans called the trio’s prior dance training “cheating”, especially when they all made the quarter final. One wrote: “As brilliant as they are, these three competing against people who’d never danced before the show, isn’t fair.”
Others said the dancers had more experience, but the performance was better. One commentator said that “watching this show is exciting because they can dance next to professionals without looking out of place or behind them.”
Strictly’s Christmas special winner Scarlett Moffatt was also accused of cheating after she revealed she’d done ballroom and Latin competitions as a child. Though Scarlett has said she’d never do the main show because of her experience, she did defend her appearance in the Christmas episode.
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She described dancing as a child to The Sun. They really hyped me up, I believe. I enjoy dancing, but I was a young girl when I first started out. I’m now 35. She said, “I did dance, but it was a long time ago.”
What do you think? Should celebs with dance experience be banned from Strictly? Take our poll and have your say in the comments below.
The Tajik government reported several armed incursions this month, straining its fragile relationship with Afghanistan’s Taliban leaders, as tensions are roiling along the Tajikstan-Afghanistan border.
More than a dozen people have been killed in attacks by men whom Tajik authorities call “terrorists” and the resulting clashes with Tajik forces, officials in Dushanbe and Beijing said. Chinese nationals are among the victims of the former Soviet Union’s mountainous terrain.
At least five people were killed in the most recent fighting this week, including “three terrorists,” according to officials in the Shamsiddin Shokhin district of Tajikistan.
Tajikistan has long opposed the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, a country it shares a largely unsecured 1, 340km (830-mile) border with.
The frequency of recent border clashes raises questions about the Taliban’s ability to impose order and security, and despite the two countries’ cautious diplomatic exchanges to adjust to new regional realities, according to analysts.
What is known about the clashes along the Tajik-Afghan border and why they are important:
A Taliban flag flies on top of a bridge across the Panj river on the Afghan-Tajik border as seen from Tajikistan’s Darvoz district]File: Amir Isaev/AFP]
What is going on at the border of Tajikistan and Afghanistan?
The border passes through southern Tajikistan’s and northeastern Afghanistan’s remote, mountainous terrain along the Panj river.
On Thursday, Tajikistan’s State Committee for National Security said in a statement that “three members of a terrorist organisation” crossed into Tajik territory on Tuesday. The men were located the following morning and engaged in firefighting with Tajik border guards, according to the committee. According to the report, three intruders and five others were killed.
Tajik officials did not name the armed men or specify which group they belonged to. The authorities claimed at the scene that they had discovered three M-16 rifles, a Kalashnikov assault rifle, three foreign-made pistols with silencers, ten hand grenades, a night vision scope, and explosives.
Dushanbe claimed that this was the third attack in the past month that amounted to the death of its personnel. It was carried out by Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province.
These attacks, Tajik officials said on Thursday, “prove that the Taliban government is demonstrating serious and repeated irresponsibility and non-commitment in fulfilling its international obligations and consistent promises to ensure security … and to combat members of terrorist organisations”.
The Taliban were asked to “apologise to the people of Tajikistan and take effective measures to ensure security along the shared border,” according to the Tajik statement.
Although Tajikistan has not stated what the attack’s intentions may be, they have reportedly targeted Chinese businesses and residents employed there.
Workers of Talco Gold, a joint Tajik-Chinese mining firm, speak in front of a poster of Chinese President Xi Jinping and Tajik President Emomali Rahmon at the Saritag antimony mine in western Tajikistan]File: AFP]
How does China manage to get all this?
With a sizable footprint in infrastructure, mining, and other border-region projects, Beijing is the country’s largest creditor and one of its most powerful economic partners.
China and Tajikistan also share a 477km (296-mile) border running through the high-altitude Pamir Mountains in eastern Tajikistan, adjacent to China’s Xinjiang region.
In the final week of November, two attacks were launched against Chinese businesses and individuals. Three Chinese nationals were killed when a drone carrying an explosive device attacked a compound owned by Shohin SM, a private Chinese gold-mining company, on November 26 in the remote Khatlon region of Tajikik-Afghanistan.
In a second attack on November 30, a group of men armed with guns opened fire on workers employed by the state-owned China Road and Bridge Corporation, killing at least two people in Tajikistan’s Darvoz district.
According to Tajik officials, those attacks took place in villages in the province of Badakhshan in Afghanistan, but they did not reveal any affiliations or motivations.
In Pakistan’s Balochistan province and along the Afghan-Pakistan border, Chinese nationals are also targeted.
China’s embassy in Dushanbe advised Chinese companies and personnel to evacuate the border area. According to Chinese officials, Tajikistan should take all necessary steps to protect the safety of Chinese businesses and citizens there.
Who is the perpetrator of these attacks?
While the attackers have not been identified, analysts and observers believe the attacks carry the hallmarks of the ISIL (ISIS) affiliate in Khorasan Province (ISKP), which, they said, aims to discredit Afghanistan’s Taliban leaders.
According to Ibraheem Bahiss, an analyst at the International Crisis Group in Kabul, “The ISKP has attacked foreigners inside Afghanistan and carried out attacks on foreigners inside Afghanistan as a key pillar of their strategy.”
According to Bahiss, “the goal is to transform the Taliban’s standing as a security provider into something that regional governments should work with.”
Taliban members participate in a rally to mark the third anniversary of the Taliban’s seizure of Kabul in the Afghan capital on August 14, 2024. [Sayed Hassib/Reuters]
What response has the Taliban given to these attacks?
Kabul expressed its “deep sorrow” over the killings of Chinese workers on November 28.
The Taliban placed the blame for the violence on an unnamed armed group, which, according to the Taliban, is “striving to create chaos and instability in the region and to sow distrust among countries,” and gave Tajikistan the assurance of full cooperation.
The Taliban’s interior minister, Sirajuddin Haqqani, said Kabul is still committed to the 2020 Doha Agreement, which allows for a gradual withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan in exchange for Taliban commitments to stop Afghanistan from acting as a base for attacks on other nations.
Addressing a police cadet graduation ceremony at the National Police Academy in Kabul on Thursday, Haqqani said Afghanistan posed no threat to other countries and the door to dialogue remains open.
We want to talk through dialogue about issues, mistrust, or miscommunications. The confrontational test has been passed. We may be weak in resources, but our faith and will are strong”, he said, adding that security had improved to the extent that Taliban officials now travel across the country without weapons.
No “terrorist groups” are operating out of Afghanistan, according to the Taliban. The UN sanctions-monitoring committee recently cited the presence of several armed groups, including ISKP, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, al-Qaeda, the Turkistan Islamic Party, Jamaat Ansarullah, and Ittehad-ul-Mujahideen Pakistan.
Jamaat Ansarullah is a Tajik group linked to al-Qaeda-aligned networks and active primarily in northern Afghanistan near the Tajik border.
A border road is crossed by Afghans in the Darvoz district of Tajikistan.
How do Tajikistan and the Taliban interact?
For decades, the relationship between Tajikistan and the Taliban has been defined by deep ideological hostility and ethnic mistrust with Dushanbe one of the group’s fiercest critics in Central Asia.
Tajikistan joined the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, which was led by former defense minister and military leader Ahmad Shah Massoud.
Tajikistan was the only country in its neighbors to object to the new government’s official recognition following the Taliban’s resumption of power in Afghanistan in August 2021.
However, pragmatic diplomatic engagement quietly began about 2023, driven by economic necessity and shared security fears over the presence of ISKP. A senior Tajik delegation made its first trip to Kabul since the Taliban’s return to power in November, accelerating the restoration of relations there.
However, the two governments continue to exchange accusations that one country has “terrorists,” which is a significant thorn in bilateral relations, and that drug trafficking is occurring across their borders.
The Tajik-Afghan border has long been a major trafficking route for Afghan heroin and methamphetamine into Central Asia and onwards to Russia and Europe, exploiting the area’s rugged terrain and weak policing.
The rising frequency of clashes is intriguing and new, and it raises the possibility of a new threat, according to Bahiss.
The Taliban has struggled to stop the threat from armed opposition groups, according to Bahiss, and Badakshan province, from which Tajik authorities claim the attacks on Chinese citizens come.
This security issue has been further complicated by the Taliban’s crackdown on poppy cultivation in the province, he said. Farmers in the north have resisted this policy, and the Taliban has. Poppies are the only viable cash crop because of the terrain in Badakshan, a major reason for this.
Afghanistan’s Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi called his Tajik counterpart early this month to express regret about the attacks on Chinese nationals and say his government was prepared to boost cooperation between their border forces]Anushree Fadnavis/Reuters]
How are other neighbors and the Taliban faring?
Some of its neighbors have maintained a pragmatic transactional relationship since the Taliban retakes control of Afghanistan in 2021, whereas others haven’t.
Relations with Pakistan, previously its patron, have particularly deteriorated. Islamabad accuses Kabul of houseing Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan’s (also known as the Pakistan Taliban) fighters. When Pakistan launched air strikes in Kabul, Khost, and other provinces in November, sparking retaliatory Taliban attacks on border posts, tensions erupted over this matter.
Dozens of people were killed before a ceasefire was brokered by Qatar and Turkiye. Since then, both sides have been fighting, accusing one another of breaking the fragile truce.
The Taliban blames Pakistan for its “own security failures,” rejecting Islamabad’s claims.
Following a disturbance the group caused in some Sango-Ota, Ogun State, the police command reported that it had arrested eight suspects for breaking the law, unlawful assembly, traffic obstructing, and serious assault on police officers.
Oluseyi Babaseyi, the command’s representative, confirmed this in a statement released to journalists in Abeokuta, the state capital.
A group allegedly agitating on Christmas Day, December 25th, 2025, attacked police deployed to uphold law and order at Temidire Junction and Under-Bridge in Sango-Ota, setting bonfires, preventing traffic flow, and staging protests at the intersection of the “Democratic Republic of the Yoruba” (DRY) on December 25th, 2025).
According to him, “Police operatives quickly mobilized to the affected locations, successfully dispersed the group, and arrested the following suspects: Adewale Sosanya, M’ aged 48, Opeyemi Oladotun, M’ aged 31, Ajoke Gabriel, F’ aged 19, Adewale Adebomojo, M’ aged 40, Olurotimi Ademola, M’ aged 52, and Toyin Gabriel, F’ aged 40,”
Also read: Governor Abiodun gives SUVs to Ogun LG Chairmen.
He claimed that the suspects’ vehicles, which included a Toyota Dyna used to transport them, two broadcast speakers, a carton containing flags, shirts with their agitation inscriptions, and banners displaying their messages and manifesto.
The suspects will be taken into custody when the investigation is finished, according to the police.
Holly Ramsay, her chef dad Gordon, and the rest of their family were seen making their way to Bath for the big day ahead of her engagement to Olympic swimmer Adam Peaty.
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Bride-to-be Holly Ramsay pictured in all white ahead of wedding(Image: w8media)
Holly Ramsay and her family were spotted preparing for her wedding to Olympic swimmer to Adam Peaty, which most of his family will not attend. As the rift in the family continues to rage on, Holly and her family, including her famous father, chef Gordon Ramsay, have started to make their way to Bath for the big day.
Holly, 25, and Adam, 30, are set to marry on 27 December, surrounded by their friends and her family. On Boxing Day, Holly was seen already opting for white as she left her father Gordon’s London house. The bride wore a long white winter coat over a black top and trousers as she made her way towards the car.
Gordon was also seen heading to the car and with, Tana, as they drove away from the family’s mansion in Wandsworth, South London. Holly’s sister Tilly, who appeared on the same series of Strictly Come Dancing as groom Adam Peaty, was snapped getting into a Porsche. The family are heading to Bath, where Holly will marry Adam in the city’s iconic Abbey.
READ MORE: Holly Ramsay and Adam Peaty’s ‘Christmas wedding inspiration’ as couple follow in Gordon’s footstepsREAD MORE: How Brooklyn Beckham and Holly Ramsay’s close bond broke down before her wedding to Adam Peaty
Many of Adam’s relatives do not appear to be there, and his mother, Caroline, reportedly did not attend the wedding. It is believed that only Bethany of his siblings still attends.
Caroline, Holly’s mother, was not present when she had her hen do in November. despite Gordon attending Adam’s stag, was invited. Caroline, whose sister Louise Williams criticized her nephew on social media for the “hurt” he caused his mother, is thought to have been deeply upset by this.
After this, Caroline was allegedly “banned” from the wedding and prohibited from seeing her five-year-old grandson George Anderson from Adam’s romance with Eiri Munro. Following Adam’s stag do in Budapest, the swimmer allegedly received “increasingly abusive and threatening” text messages from his brother, James, who was also being detained. Officers at Manchester Airport met Adams as well, apparently out of concern for his safety, on the runway.
Adam broke his silence by expressing on Instagram that they were going through “challenging times” while reiterating that “every story has two sides.” Adam, who backed his wife Holly and his sister Bethany in the post, claimed that he was unable to provide full information as a result of an “ongoing police investigation into serious matters that arose long before recent events.”
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The couple haven’t seemed to let the feud stop their celebrations. On Christmas morning Holly posted on Instagram to gush about her last holiday “as a Miss”.
The model captioned a photo of her and Adam holding hands in response to “Last Christmas as a Miss” above the photo. Adam made out with the Ramsays over the holiday.
