Penworthy

The William Hill Great St Wilfrid Handicap at Ripon tomorrow (3.20 p.m.) is always a difficult puzzle for punters to unravel. Run over six furlongs for a first prize of more than £50,000, a field of 19 runners has been declared. With its unusual undulations on the sprint course, Ripon is a specialist track which means that it is an advantage to have strong course and distance form. The trouble is that so many of these experienced sprinters have just that so it does not narrow the field down by that much.  Northern trainers have a superb record in the race too but, once again, they are extremely well represented in the race tomorrow and so this fact is not a huge help either in the search to find the winner.

York’s famous Ebor meeting will be here before we know it and trainer William Haggas will be attempting to plunder many of its top races with his talented string. Although his stables are in Newmarket, Haggas is a Yorkshireman and so he particularly enjoys seeing his runners win at the course which lies some 40 miles from his birthplace of Skipton. The race that Haggas targets with relish each year is the Sky Bet Ebor Handicap, which is the richest flat handicap run in Britain and has a prize of £300,000 for the winner. The contest on Saturday 24 August is over a distance of one mile six furlongs and for a maximum field of 22 runners so, with a fast pace all but guaranteed, stamina is of the essence.

Glorious Goodwood has hopefully saved the best until last with two fabulous days of racing still to come. The detractors will point out that too many races on this undulating, turning track have hard-luck stories and the draw is often all-important as well. However, when the sun shines, this meeting is hard to beat in terms of highlighting flat racing at its best. I am already heavily invested in the Coral Golden Mile (today 3 p.m.) in which it’s a huge advantage to be drawn in single figures. Johan bucked the trend on soft ground last year when he won from stall 18 but the previous seven winners were from berths 1, 3, 3, 3, 2, 5 and 2. Those who love statistics will be in no rush to back a horse with a double-figure draw.

Take a bow, SUMMERGHAND. Trainer David O’Meara’s gallant old warrior will be participating in his 100th race tomorrow when he contests the Moet & Chandon International Stakes over seven furlongs (Ascot, 3 p.m.). The achievements of this gelding are remarkable since he made his racecourse debut at Doncaster in May 2017. He has won 17 of his 99 starts and amassed more than £624,000 in prize money. Those victories, all of them over six furlongs, include the Unibet Stewards’ Cup at Glorious Goodwood in 2020 and the Virgin Bet Ayr Gold Cup in 2022. At the height of his powers, Summerghand was running off an official mark of 113 whereas tomorrow, aged ten, he will be running off just 91.

Trainer David O’Meara loves heading down from his North Yorkshire stables to plunder some of the big summer handicaps with his best horses. At the top of his list of aims are the most valuable contests at Glorious Goodwood and he doesn’t mind running three or four of his string in the same race to increase his chances of landing a nice prize. O’Meara has won two of the last four runnings of the Coral Golden Mile and, with a first prize of more than £77,000 this year, there is no doubt the handler will be targeting the race again in two weeks’ time. My strong fancy for this contest on 2 August is BLUE FOR YOU who returned to form last Saturday when he won the John Smith Racing Handicap at York for the second year running.

Armchair sports fans are in for a treat this weekend and I am not just talking about England’s appearance in the final of Euro 2024 or the Wimbledon finals. Racing enthusiasts can look forward to watching 11 races on ITV tomorrow afternoon spread over just 170 minutes. This is so-called ‘Super Saturday’ when there is almost endless live action from three big meetings: Newmarket, York and Ascot. It’s not all about quantity either because there is quality too: Newmarket stages the Group 1 My Pension Expert July Cup (4.35 p.m.) and there are plenty of other high-class races, handicaps and non-handicaps alike, on all three cards.

It’s impossible not to like and admire Charlie Fellowes: he is one of those people who gives 100 per cent to whatever he sets his mind to. The Newmarket trainer’s enthusiasm for racing and the horses in his care is infectious, and he is always willing to talk to the media about plans for his stable stars.  In short, Fellowes is a wonderful ambassador for the sport and he deserves all the big-race success that he has enjoyed in his first decade as a trainer. By his own high standards, Fellowes has had a relatively quiet season so far but I am convinced that the second half of his season will be better than the first half for him. My thinking partly comes from the fact that the astute handler is adamant that he has some really promising two-year-olds among his 65-strong string.

Unless I am being kept in the dark, Spectator Life has no intention of following the lead of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme in scrapping their regular racing tips. That said, those sacked are usually the last to know – even when they are paid to predict the future. Kelvin MacKenzie, the legendary former editor of the Sun newspaper, once dismissed his astrologer with the words, ‘As you will no doubt have foreseen… you’re fired.’  Without getting overconfident on the safety of my position, I will continue as normal until told otherwise. Newcastle’s JenningsBet Northumberland Plate card tomorrow is the one and only time each year that I bet on the all-weather surface and that’s because this is a really classy card with some competitive racing.

Lambourn trainer Jonny Portman is a splendid ambassador for horse racing: he is talented, charming and witty. Television presenters and newspaper journalists love interviewing him because his dry sense of humour invariably comes to the fore. Addressing some challenging times for his stable in 2022, he told a racing journalist, ‘I’ve had four owners die this year and I know two more are planning on it. So I do worry.’ Portman invariably gets the best out of his horses – he currently has 45 in training – and, if he had a couple of big-spending owners, he would undoubtedly be competing for the sport’s top prizes more often. Two Tempting is this season’s star for the yard, winning four of his five races and picking up some £120,000 in prize money along the way.

Aidan O’Brien’s Kyprios is likely to go off at close to even-money favourite for today’s big race, the Group 1 Ascot Gold Cup (4.25 p.m). He was absent at Royal Ascot last year after a setback but won the Gold Cup the previous year and it is understandable that he is at the top of the market. However, I can’t help feeling that he is a really poor price given the level of the opposition and the fact he is not even officially the top-rated horse in the race. That honour narrowly goes to Trawlerman who beat Kyprios off level weights at Ascot in October in the Qipco British Champions Long Distance Cup.

Aidan O’Brien’s four-year-old colt Auguste Rodin is talented and infuriating in equal measures. When last year’s Betfred Derby winner is good, he is simply superb but when he is bad, he is very poor indeed. He is a nightmare for punters to evaluate because he has been stone last in two of his last five runs but there have been two impressive winning performances during that time too. My big hopes today lie with my two strong fancies for the Kensington Palace Stakes All in all, I am happy to take him on in today’s feature race at Royal Ascot, the Grade 1 Prince of Wales’s Stakes (4.25 p.m.). I am no keener to back Inspiral at skinny odds either after her uninspired comeback when fourth at Newbury, even though I accept that race was very much a prep run for Royal Ascot.

It is day one of Royal Ascot and there are some fabulous races to savour. I will always marginally prefer the Cheltenham Festival with jumps’ horses to the Berkshire extravaganza on the flat but I am greatly looking forward to the next five days. Down to business: the King Charles III Stakes (3.45 p.m.) offers mouth-watering fare for those who love the speedsters. With fast ground in his favour, I had expected to put up Regional for this race after his near-perfect prep in Ireland and because today’s stiff five furlongs should be ideal for him. However, I can’t back him at a top priced 9-2 in such a competitive 17-runner Group 1. Regional is talented but no world beater.

Patriotic racegoers will be hoping the King and Queen are winning owners at next week’s prestigious Royal Ascot meeting. A year ago, the William Haggas-trained Desert Hero duly obliged in the royal colours and the same horse will be among their runners next week too. However, the royal couple could have one of their string in the winners’ enclosure as early as tomorrow when SERRIED RANKS contests the Churchill Tyres Supporting Macmillan Sprint Handicap. This contest, however, will take place at York racecourse (3.35 p.m.), more than 200 miles away from the Berkshire track. I am pretty confident that the Ralph Beckett-trained, three-year-old gelding will step up on his seasonal debut at Sandown in April when he was only fifth of the nine runners.

As a keen follower of most sports, I like it when the ‘good guys’ do well. By the ‘good guys’, I mean the elite sportsmen (and women) who are humble about their achievements and who you feel you could enjoy a couple of pints with at the bar of your local pub. In racing, I would be pretty sure that trainer Owen Burrows falls into this good-guy category. I have never met him but contacts of mine who know him well like him a great deal. He is knowledgeable, charming, straightforward and modest when interviewed on television too. More importantly from the point of view of a punter, Burrows is an exceptionally talented trainer.

Who would have thought it? After four Classic races this season on both sides of the Irish Sea, the score between the trainers from the two nations is… Britain 4, Ireland 0. After the Irish routed their British rivals at the Cheltenham festival and with the formidable strength of Aidan O’Brien Co Tipperary yard, that scoreline would not have been predicted by many. This weekend we see the next two English classics contested on the Epsom Downs This weekend we see the next two English classics contested on the Epsom Downs: the Betfred Oaks today and the Betfred Derby tomorrow. Although horses from the O’Brien yard head the market for both races, it is not impossible British trainers could come out on top again. From a betting point of view, I hope that is the case.

Horses drawn high had a considerable advantage in the big sprint races at Haydock a year ago and I suspect it will be same again tomorrow, even though the going is much softer than 12 months ago. There could be a particular advantage for front runners if they claim the near-side rail early on and don’t go too fast in order to keep that advantageous position. There are other complicating factors, however, for punters, notably the ground which, as of this morning was ‘soft, heavy in places’. That’s almost certain to mean there will be several non runners between now and tomorrow afternoon, with horses that prefer good ground kept for another day. In the Group 2 Betfred Temple Stakes (tomorrow 1.50 p.m.

The classiest race this weekend is the Group 1 Al Shaqab Lockinge Stakes at Newbury (tomorrow, 3.35 p.m.) in which the French-trained Big Rock and the Newmarket-trained Inspiral are understandably vying for favouritism. They are officially the two top rated horses in the race and they both finished last season on a high: Big Rock won the Group 1 Queen Elizabeth II Stakes at Ascot on Champions Day by a comfortable six lengths, while John and Thady Gosden’s Inspiral travelled to America and won the Grade 1 Maker's Mark Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Turf by a neck under a strong Frankie Dettori ride.

There is so much to like about Chester’s three-day May meeting ending today: a unique course with an atmosphere to match, quality racehorses, highly-competitive contests every day and much more besides. If you have never been to the Cheshire track situated on the outskirts of this cathedral city on the River Dee, put it on your to-do list now because it will not disappoint. I have already put up one tip for today’s big race: the Chester Cup (3.40 p.m.). Zoffee, suggested at 16-1 a week ago, is less than half that price now and, in theory, he should benefit from his number one draw.  However, he tends to be held up so the danger is he may get stuck behind a wall of horses coming into the straight.

If City of Troy is as brilliant as his trainer Aidan O’Brien thinks he is and he runs to his best form, then he will win the first Classic of the flat season at Newmarket tomorrow. The three-year-old colt is not just a ‘talking horse’: his record on the racetrack last season was sensationally good, namely when destroying a decent field in the Group 1 Dewhurst Stakes in October. Similarly, if Rosallion is as talented as his trainer Richard Hannon thinks and runs to his best, then he should finish second to City of Troy in the Qipco 2000 Guineas (Newmarket 3.35 p.m.).

As the curtain falls on another jumps’ season tomorrow, the ups and downs of ante-post betting are all too apparent once again. Threeunderthrufive, put up three weeks ago at 20-1, is now 7-1 second favourite for the bet365 Gold Cup (tomorrow, 3.35 p.m.) at Sandown. With his favoured good ground almost guaranteed, he will have a live chance of defying top weight in the 20-runner contest. My second ante-post bet in the race, Desertmore House, had looked an even better proposition. Put up two weeks ago at 25-1, he was heavily backed into 7-1 second favourite. He, too, had his favoured good ground looming only for his trainer Martin Brassil to decide to skip Sandown in favour of a run in his native Ireland. Ouch.