Spectator Life

My sister and her friends were watching the conclusion of Arthur Fery’s third round tiebreaker with Aperol-laced bated breath. Curiously enough, the match had already finished. Finally Fery began to speak: ‘oh thank God, he’s posh’, exclaimed one friend. Fery is this summer’s heartthrob, and a major coup for those who thought the posh boy had had their day. There’s been requisite time between the Hugh Grant heyday that it’s become novel and cool again; Leo Woodall laid some strong groundwork in 2024’s One Day, but it took Wimbledon’s Centre Court to cement the return.  I think the heatwave has a lot to do with it.

Two hours and 17 minutes after arriving at Wimbledon, I realise I hate tennis. Hate it? I loathe it. All ‘40-love’ jargon and thwack thwack of a ball. It’s football without the pack mentality. Badminton with better PR.   ‘Why are you even here then?’ asks an Argentinian tennis agent when I say this by the players’ lounge. ‘This is the oldest tournament in the world! It’s the best!’ He’s right. He’s an international expert so of course he’s right. Even if all his singles players were knocked out by day three.  But, of course, that’s exactly why I’m here.

Football is fond of superlatives. Before this World Cup, column inches dwelt on its excess. Tickets were the priciest ever; there would be the most matches, the most teams, the most players. Amid the noise, many adopted that phrase favoured by Sunday League managers after a 9-0 drubbing: all we wanted was for football to be ‘the real winner’. Let the games begin.  We have been vindicated. The football has delivered and the hyperbole has quietened into background babble. But what could not have been expected was just how good it has been. Ahead of the tournament, naysayers implied it was already a damp squib. Fifa’s greed in expanding the number of participants to 48 from 32 would see each mismatch become a farce. England would sweep past DR Congo.

There are signs: a Wimbledon towel in the downstairs loo. Another, faded, in a child’s swimming bag. Maybe a Links of London strawberry charm lingering in the jewellery box. All not-that-subtle clues of a hazy student summer spent working at the All England Lawn Tennis Club.  For two weeks swathes of impossibly well-spoken university students (Edinburgh, Durham, Bristol, Newcastle…) descend on Wimbledon to serve up Pimm’s, flog tennis racquet-shaped key rings, escort players – and clean loos. It’s the summer job to trump all summer jobs.

Some out-of-form sprinters head the market at Sandown tomorrow for the Group 3 Coral Charge (1.50 p.m.). If the likes of Asfoora, Rumstar and Shagraan return to form, they will be tough to beat, but that’s quite a big 'if' given their lacklustre recent racetrack performances. On the face of it, trainer Jack Channon’s GETREADYTORUMBLE also has moderate form this season but he has not had much luck in running in two of his last three starts. Notably, last time out, he reared leaving the stalls, losing several lengths, in the Group 1 King Charles III Stakes at Royal Ascot.

Epic figures leave epic gaps when they retire. The generations that follow are doomed to be compared to past heroes by nostalgic fans. So it is with Roger Federer. Novak Djokovic might be the GOAT (greatest of all time, to use the phrase du jour) in terms of sheer numerical achievement. But tennis is art, not science. Ballet, not bookkeeping. For the aesthetes among us who drink in the sight of on-court grace like champagne, Federer will always be number one.  To answer why, you don’t need words, though heaven knows enough have been written about the grace of Rog. (David Foster Wallace famously called watching the Swiss savant ‘a religious experience’). Click on any clip and watch Fed glide on the court, near-supernatural in his poise.

More often than not, controversy over liquid refreshment at a football World Cup focuses on the unsavoury antics of England's travelling support. But, in the US these past two weeks, the focus has been less on the booze and more on the boos that have greeted that dreaded moment, roughly at the midpoint of each half, when play must stop for a 'hydration break'.  These hiatuses were introduced, as so many Fifa initiatives are, with all the good will in the world. The idea was that when the temperature tops 32°C, the players should get a chance to take a short break to get extra fluids on board for fear of dehydration.

Newcastle stages some quality all-weather racing this weekend, the highlight of which is tomorrow’s JenningsBet Northumberland Plate (3.15 p.m.). As I feared in last week’s column, my main fancy for the race has not made the “cut” and is instead in the consolation race. Cerulean Bay was one of the many eyecatchers at Royal Ascot despite being out of the places There are two main reasons why the quality of this meeting, run on an artificial Tapeta surface, is particularly high this year. Firstly, the generous level of prize money – the Plate, for example, is worth more than £77,000 to winning connections. Secondly, a lot of trainers whose horses prefer soft ground are observing the current heatwave and concluding a race on the all-weather is better than no run at all.

In my more romantic moments, standing at Hellfire Corner, in the drizzly shadow of engine houses and Carn Brea, watching Redruth play rugby, I think of Richard Burton’s line: ‘I grew up among heroes who went down the pit, who played rugby, told stories, sang songs of war.’   Last week Burton’s Celtic cousins across the water from South Wales won their fifth rugby County Championship in a decade, as Cornwall saw off Lancashire with a 39-24 victory at Twickenham. As with Wales, rugby is how Cornwall expresses its true self. It may not be the picture postcard version, but if anything evokes the spirit of Cornwall; the mining, the granite, and the Methodism, it is our rugby team.

There is something luxurious about the group stage of a World Cup. Gone is the waiting. Gone the fill-inch columns about arcane details of squad selection. Gone the faux-humanitarian pearl-clutching about global sport events being a massive waste of time and money. Gone the moaning about the scheduling. Just stay up late; it’s actually quite fun. For now, here we are, with the glorious, technicolour feast. Goals left, right and centre. None of the quotidian misery of a goalless draw on a rainy Tuesday night in Stoke. Now it is the sun-soaked rush of national anthems, heroes, villains and  – most of all – a goal fest aided by defences that barely know each other from Adam. Matches that you’d never before think twice about – Uzbekistan vs Colombia at 3 a.m.

Newmarket handler James Tate has his string in sparkling form and he doesn’t waste bullets by sending horses to Royal Ascot unless they have a chance of winning. Tate has enjoyed six winners from 19 runners over the past fortnight for a winning strike rate of 32 per cent. His only runner so far this week at Royal Ascot, Blue Rc, was second in the Royal Hunt Cup at 28-1 to a well-handicapped horse in Rogue Diplomat. Tate doesn’t waste bullets by sending horses to Royal Ascot unless they have a chance of winning I think his horse, DARN HOT GALLOP has a big chance today of winning the Sandringham Stakes (5 p.m.). She is three wins from four races, her only defeat coming when she was outclassed in the Betfred 1,000 Guineas at Newmarket in early May.

Royal Ascot gets underway at 2.30 p.m. today with the Queen Anne Stakes, a fascinating Group 1 race over the straight mile. DOCKLANDS did this column a good turn this time last year when winning this contest after being put up at 25-1. Although he is not going to be anything like those odds this time, I am going to stay loyal to this likeable six-year-old. Admittedly this year’s contest is a hotter event than a year ago and the likes of Notable Speech, Opera Ballo and More Thunder are officially rated superior to trainer Harry Eustace’s course specialist. However, Docklands overcame both a slow start and his rider dropping his whip in last year’s race, and he comes into the meeting in good form.

Race meetings at courses including York, Sandown and Chester offer decent fare for horse racing enthusiasts this weekend but many will already be looking forward to Royal Ascot’s five-day extravaganza beginning on Tuesday. York, in particular, stages some competitive handicaps tomorrow including the 22-runner Churchill Tyres Supporting Macmillan Sprint Handicap (3.35 p.m.) over a distance of six furlongs. Ed Walker’s Golden Brown, who is a nice ride for an apprentice, looks overpriced for this contest. The three-year-old gelding has been slowly getting better with racing, finally scoring on his ninth run when victorious at Salisbury last month from a poor draw.

With the modern-day racehorse increasingly bred for speed, it is likely that several of tomorrow’s runners at Epsom in the Betfred Derby (4 p.m.) will not truly stay the race distance of a mile and a half. The fact that this year’s contest is going to be run with plenty of cut in the ground means that, unless there is an unusually slow pace, it will take a proper three-year-old staying colt to win this prestigious Grade 1 race. After his 1-2-3 in the French Derby last weekend, Irish maestro Aidan O’Brien is the likeliest trainer to win tomorrow’s Classic with one of his four runners, but most realistically with either Benvenuto Cellini or Pierre Bonnard.

It was a few moments before the whistle blew on the opening match of the 2006 World Cup when a text message arrived from a colleague. ‘Well, here we go!’ it read. I rolled my eyes, slipped my phone back into my pocket, and left the message unanswered.  Why the grumpiness? Because the message came from a man who normally took no interest whatsoever in the game, except to occasionally mock people like me for being daft enough to enjoy a 'silly game with silly men kicking a ball around'. Yet here he was, transformed by the arrival of the World Cup into an enthusiastic student of… 'footie'.  He wasn't alone.

Trainer Ed Walker has long had a high opinion of CELANDINE so it was disappointing to see her miss the break on her seasonal debut in a listed race over six furlongs at Newmarket earlier this month. Given her tardy start, her run when fifth behind Flora of Bermuda showed she still has talent and there could be more to come this season as the horse, a former winner of the Group 2 Lowther Stakes at York as a two-year-old, is still only four years old. Tomorrow Celandine will have her favourable fast ground conditions but it will be even more important that she gets away sharply as the listed Betway Achilles Stakes (Carlisle 2.33 p.m.) is over the minimum trip of five furlongs.

Newmarket-based Robert Cowell is known as the ‘sprint king’ for a reason: for many years he has been a masterful trainer of horses that race over the minimum trips of five furlongs and six furlongs. It was telling that in an interview for his Racing Post Weekender stable tour last week, he indicated he would rather train another winner of the King’s Stand Stakes at Royal Ascot – now the King Charles III Stakes – than the Epsom Derby. The King’s Stand is a race that he won in 2011 with Prohibit but it’s probably fair to say that every other trainer in the country would much prefer a Derby winner on their CV.

MORE THUNDER was one of last season’s most improved flat horses, starting off as a moderate handicapper officially rated at 87 and finishing up, after four victories, with a lofty rating of 117. At Newbury tomorrow, he steps up in distance to a mile for the first time when he is pitched into tough Grade 1 company in the Boyle Sports Lockinge Stakes (2.35 p.m.). Five of the ten runners in the contest have higher ratings than him and several of those at the top of the market also have the benefit of a prep run.

Tony Martin, the shrewd Irish trainer, loves to take aim at today’s Ladbrokes Chester Cup and its consolation race and I can see his three runners in the two races making their mark. Back Peaky Blinder 1 point each way at 8-1 with bet365, paying five places. ZANNDABAD has not won on the flat for three seasons but he is down to a nice mark of 91 in the Chester Cup (3.05 p.m.). He ran a huge race in this contest in 2024 when third to Zoffee after meeting trouble in running from his double-figure draw in stall 10. Today he is only marginally better drawn in stall 9 but we know he handles the track and the good ground, plus Clifford Lee is an interesting jockey booking too.

Trainer George Boughey is convinced that his horse Bow Echo has a big chance of landing tomorrow’s Betfred 2000 Guineas (Newmarket, 3.35 p.m.) after a ‘faultless’ preparation. This unbeaten three-year-old colt is a course and distance winner who is proven on fast ground so he is going to take a lot of beating in the first classic of the 2026 flat season. Irish handler Aidan O’ Brien’s only runner Gstaad is officially the highest-rated horse in the 15-runner field and, with Ryan Moore in the saddle, he also looks likely to run a big race in which the first prize for winning connections is nearly £300,000. Gstaad was heavily backed yesterday meaning he and Bow Echo are now vying for favouritism in this one-mile contest.