The day has started well with my “greening up” the Betfair Golf position, thanks to Ludvig Aberg’s 4-shot lead in the Scottish Open. As I have said before, Sandy Lane’s tips are focused on the sports odds betting market- but with multiple selections to cover, I prefer to use the betting exchange market. When you back…
Horseracing
By the Centre – Quick Left
I stayed up late to watch the much-delayed Joe Biden Press Conference, which kicked in at about 00:45. I wish I had a pint of whatever juice they’d given him before he went on—or possibly it was a full blood dope—whatever, it worked. He appeared fluent, cognitive, and old. He’ll be older in three or…
Game Set and Match at the Newmarket July meeting
You will have been aware of some technical issues in my recent output, capped on Saturday night by an enormous peal of thunder and a lightning bolt that unbeknownst to us, had blown out the main internet and wifi router. As it was, we woke on Sunday morning to the voice of Alexa whining that…
Biden, Southgate, Archer and Prescott. You’d do business with that firm surely?
I watched the CNN presidential debate this morning, with some scenes that may haunt us over the next few months. It was not Presidential on anybody’s behalf. It was rambling, at times incoherent, and above all sad. There was a moment when I thought maybe this was the plan all the time. Run this debate…
2024 Royal Ascot – Day Five (Sat 22nd June)
A dreadful day yesterday, with not even a hint of potential success. Chesham Stakes (Listed) – 2:30pm Karl Burke’s two-year-olds have been a wonder this week 5R-2W-1P, and he runs MOTWAHIJ here. He ran an encouraging race at Hamilton and should progress with this step up in distance. Since it was purchased in the Craven…
2024 Royal Ascot – Day Four (Fri 21st June)
21st June DRAW BIAS The first ten home in the Britannia yesterday (ov er 8f on the straight course) were 15, 16, 31, 33, 23, 29, 19, 20, 17 . It is thus reasonable to assume that high draws might have a bias today in some of the big handicaps, notably the Palace Of Holyrood…
2024 Royal Ascot – Day Three (Thurs 20th June)
Norfolk Stakes (G2) – 2:30 pm My first shortlist was cut to two with the final decs, ARIZONA BLAZE – WHISTLEJACKET and I think both are good for a podium. I just can’t see Wes Ward going home empty-handed, and SATURDAY FLIRT has been bought by Mrs Fitri Hay since winning on her debut at…
2024 Royal Ascot – Day Two (Weds 19th June)
Queen Mary Stakes (G2) – 2:30 pm 17th June: I’m sticking Andrew Balding’s KASSAYA, a ½ sister to 200 Gns winner Chaldean. she has some terrific form lines developed from her Salisbury debut, including 3rd Megalithic running-up in the Woodcote at Epsom and the fifth winning since. Her Nottingham LTO victory looked very impressive, and…
Royal Ascot 2024 – At A Glance
Selections from the trends shortlist based on five-day entries Final Selections TUESDAY JUNE 18 Queen Anne Stakes (G1) – 2:30 pm AUDIENCE 3 pts Win – MALJOOM 2 pts e/w – DOLAYLI 2 pts e/w Sort List of Three: BIG ROCK 6/1 – AUDIENCE 10/1 – INSPIRAL 9/4 Away from the trends: POKER FACE 33/1…
2024 Royal Ascot – Day One (Tues 18th June)
16th June : The going at Ascot was described as good to firm, good in places at 11.02 am on Sunday. Sunday has been generally dry with a few isolated showers, and Monday is forecast to be largely dry with sunny spells. Tuesday and Wednesday are also now forecast to be generally dry, with the…
They did all that to save us from tyranny, and we still end up with a fool.
A very jolly evening ended a week full of many pains, memories, dashed hopes, and random acts of kindness and self-sacrifice. The evening was a local fund-raiser for a small village church, which involved a wine-tasting competition. Already, I can sense your heart sinking, as did mine, at the thought of the arrayed ranks of…
Derby Day
It is a statistical mystery to me how I have participated in three different Derby sweepstakes at three different events over the last three days and not one of our various syndicated tickets has been within fifty of any drawn number. We could have purchased a Derby horse for next year for a fraction of…
Derby Dinner – Lunch – Derby Dinner – Funeral – Oaks – Wake – Derby
The back cracker has done her job as far as she can, and the physio has called the knee problem as a meniscus and told me to forget Strictly. As far as is physically possible, I am thus fit for The Derby Double Header. The Derby Double Header is notoriously difficult in the pantheon of…
Racing’s Garden needs some professional work doing.
The Lambourn garden has just become an issue. Last week, we removed dead wood, cleared undergrowth, and installed a new boundary dog-proof fence, which has resulted in our having unfettered views of things we don’t want to see. The laws of unintentional consequences have just bitten us. We can see from the original planting that…
York Day 3 – and some of Newbury
Nothing much to report today. South West Water has admitted to failings… more train strikes are coming… the collusion between China and Russia over who gets what bits after the wheat fields are all irradiated remains intact and en route… the BHA remains in power and hasn’t been disbanded by ARC… really it’s pretty much…
York Dante Meeting Day 2
I thought the day would go swimmingly well—we were spot on in the first and somewhat foolishly swerved the opportunity to call the 32/1 forecast. But from then on, we might as well have been talking gobbledygook. Somewhere in the middle of it all, the Slovakian PM was shot. I kept half-an-eye on that and…
Day 1 of The York Dante Meeting – and a plea for fairness
When The Deluge comes – and please save your money by NOT punting on a hung parliament – the new Culture Secretary (in charge of our sport) will likely be somebody who changed her name from Singh to Debbonnaire. In that one astonishingly hubristic move, Ms Thangam D. not only managed to misspell her new…
Chester May Meeting Day 3 – plus Marmalade, Greek girls and American fakes
This morning, a propos of absolutely nothing, I spent too much time pondering over the essential matters of modern living that had grasped my attention in the last 24 hours – quite apart from the wretched draw at Chester. The first was whether The Savoy or Claridges makes its own Marmalade from scratch, on-site. I…
Chester May Festival Day 2
It was a sad day yesterday at Chester – but also pretty weird. The weirdness emanated from the results, which even my late Nanny knew enough to exclaim as she made our breakfast after a night out with her friends from Liverpool: “You need to have your draws down very low at Chester” In the…
Chester May Meeting Day 1.
There’s a line in Peter Pan which goes: “In time they could not even fly after their hats. Want of practice, they called it; but what it really meant was that they no longer believed.” I suspect, too, that many of my regular readers have become incapable of going after their wind-tossed racing trilbys because…
The City of Troy lies somewhere over the rainbow together with Tory hopes.
Somewhere near your home at this very moment are two different houses. One of them has Sabrina Habitat-Scatter-Cushion dabbing her eyes at the breakfast table and saying, “What is to become of us?” At the other end of the village, Roger Bader-Kite tells his house guests over breakfast, “We have to gather round the old…
A little bit of French, a touch of Swahili and a dollop of nag. Here’s a lot of tips
Back at 2:00am, from a delicious dinner in London at Le Colombier next to the Royal Marsden. Super service, a sensational wine list, a good collection of Chelsea’s finest 70-somethings who patently regarded the place as their caff, and some excellent food, including a very good Fricassée de Rognons de Veau à la Dijonnaise. The…
Punchestown and The Guineas. Col. Tufty Bufty tells Lawrence what he thinks of the entries
45 runners declared for the whole Newmarket card… what can I say? At Goodwood in the 3:50, there is £40k in guaranteed prize money, with five runners. Why?? It can’t be on the ground conditions; it was G/S when the final decs were called. Its – Its… what is the word??? Meanwhile, the frantic social…
Aintree Grand National Meeting: Day 3 THE GRAND NATIONAL
It happens pretty well every weekend. Of the half dozen or so races that I explore to suggest and sometimes select a winner, I inevitably – if only as a matter of statistical probability – get it right. Sometimes, of course, you have days like today. Days when one forensically examines the possibilities and then,…
Aintree Grand National Meeting: Day 2
It was not the worst of days for us, but I would have thought it was pretty awful for Hendo. Of his four runners, his only winner seemed constantly surprised to see a hurdle, and the other three all finished in the bottom half of their fields. The fact that Sir Gino won despite his…
Aintree Grand National Meeting: Day 1
One of the subscribers asked what courses might be considered similar to Aintree. The straight answer would be Newcastle, Ayr, Doncaster, Ffos Las, Haydock, Newbury, Wetherby, Uttoxeter, and Worcester. Left-handed and reasonably flat. The more worldly-wise amongst you will know that there is no comparative course. At the Pardubice, for example, the fences might once…
Content to be thought foolish and stupid.
I seem to spend more and more time confusing April Fools’ Day with the rest of the month and year. I must believe that some 30% of all the stories I read are fake. For example, surely this selection of today’s headlines, none of which I have gone to any lengths to find, cannot all…
The lost weekend – well parts of Friday anyway!
Be in no doubt that when the chips are down and all appears lost, Corney and Barrow can fill the void with a small cheering glass. Thus, a few of the helpers (seven and two liggers) who usually make the whole Lambourn Open Day spin along gathered to commiserate over the abandoned day. A little…
Cheltenham – for what it’s worth
SUMMARY Having unjustly gained a negative reputation for being part of the Pandemic problem, perhaps impacting local and regional community support, Cheltenham has managed to lose racing fans through a combination of poor event planning, weak and/or arrogant customer relations, aggressive price marketing, and a race schedule, which has managed to engineer an uncompetitive and,…
Cheltenham Day 4
A very smiley girl appeared at my breakfast table this morning, clutching at some of my clothing that she’d found on her travels. “You bounder and cad”, I hear you say, but wait, the Hon was close at hand; nothing untoward was afoot, and even coffee and a warmed croissant were offered, or a glass…
Cheltenham Festival Day 3
DAY 3: THURSDAY 14 MARCH 13:30 THE TURNERS NOV. CHASE (G1) 2m 4f Chase ZANAHIYR has had a good season so far with two decent graded runs before converting to Chasing. His debut saw him run into Fact To File, and his poor jumping didn’t aid his cause – but he did have Minella Cocooner…
CHELTENHAM DAY 2
DAY 2: WEDNESDAY 13 MARCH 13:30 THE GALLAGHER (BARING BINGHAM) NOV. HDL (G1) 2m 5f Hurdle If you swerve HANDSTANDS and THE GREY MAN on trends grounds, and you think the probable winner, BALLYBURN is too short, then you might want to consider either PREDATOR’S GOLD or MERCUREY. The former has recently run second in…
Cheltenham Festival Day 1
As of 8:30 am on Monday, the ground was Soft all over, and the Cross Country was Heavy, Soft in places. Some drizzle was possible on Monday. Showers are forecast for the early hours and into the morning on Tuesday (3-4mm). This will be Soft, sticky ground and beginning to dry. Champion Day – Tuesday,…
Raceweb’s Cheltenham Festival: The Stats Pack – 20 STATS YOU NEVER KNEW
The following statistics, trends, and anomalies, call it what you will – these numbers – provide a potentially useful insight into possible Festival race outcomes. The numbers are facts, but as a dear friend once remarked after Mon Mome’s National victory, your statistic on French-bred National runners winning isn’t wrong; it’s simply that there are…
The 2024 Cheltenham Festival – The Kneesup Overview
Whatever happens, please ensure that you only bet NRNB. Also remember that if there is a non-runner in Doubles, for example, the bet becomes a Single. Thus an 11 bet Yankee (1x 4, 4×3, 6×2) with a non-runner becomes a Patent (1×3 – 6×2 – 3×1 with 1 stake returned). Champion Day – Tuesday, March…
Parliamentary duplicity, some Grand National tips, and a frictionless potato peeler.
IT WAS THE WORST OF TIMES… As luck (entirely the wrong word for what transpired) would have it, I decided at about 6:30 on Wednesday night to see how the Commons was getting on with what passes for political debate these days, and have a gander at the Opposition Day SNP motion in action. It’s…
Valentine’s Day and Ascot’s Common Dress Sense
This relentless outpouring of love and affection is doing my head in! My world is divided into 300 days of relative calm, sunny uplands where the green shoots etc etc… It is often a time of relative prosperity, if not in fact, then certainly in the impressions surrounding one. A day at Ascot, a trip…
FOR A BRIEF MOMENT THERE, I THOUGHT I WAS IN TROUBLE
In the back of my mind resides many trivial racing stats. I trot them out periodically for a freshen-up and a bit of a brush-down because they’re going for a gallop quite soon, and you need to know that alles ist in Ordnung, as they used to say in Stalag Luft VII after a dodgy…
Between teenage killers, corruption in the Town Hall, barmy illegals, HMRC and the bookmakers – what could possibly go wrong?
My recent observations on the ferality of much of the infrastructure of the departmentalised Civil Service, with specific reference to HMRC, struck a personal chord with one reader. He/She/They wrote: “I have been hounded for doing nothing illegal, for paying the agreed tax in place at the time, and paying it promptly, and have been…
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
… shall think themselves mighty relieved they don’t have to do another day, fighting the Cheltenham Parking Gauleiters who surely should be considered a potential terrorist operation. Yesterday, the gate that had operated perfectly sweetly and easily in October, and this Friday, was shut to people with an acceptable badge, which had become unacceptable over…
Cheltenham Open Day 2 and the IJF have no diaries to sell
So near and yet so far – the punting today had much the same air as Chicky Oaksey having to explain why there won’t be any Injured Jockey diaries until December. The Friday of the open meeting is Countryside Day. When the shires come out to see mates, bid in the British Olympic Equestrian team’s…
I vote Labour, but my butler’s a Tory
I thought you might be interested in seeing this 1929 General Election Poster and this artice’s title, which is a quote from Louis Mountbatten. “The inspectors all round” is so ironic given what we now know about this Government’s founding of the Rapid Response Unit (Cabinet Office) – The Counter Disinformation Unit (MOD (77Brigade) and…
Night Nurse with Tonic?
The week seems to have consisted almost entirely of coughing out my lungs. Incapable of movement without hacking, I seem to have been watching endless cookery programmes whilst drinking Bovril Amontillado, much like Captain EV Kinross RN in the film In Which We Serve. I find this more palatable and easier on the nethers than…
Doncaster St Leger Day 3
I was going to tell you some fascinating gossip I heard yesterday about two trainers in York who were apparently entertaining Ms. X, the daughter of another trainer with the modern equivalent of some Sherbert dip. Papa was deeply unamused when he walked in on the home science experiment and pistols at dawn were discussed….
Doncaster St Leger Meeting Day 2
The Dentist calls, and I must be away at O-Crack, so there is no time for chats. The day was a disappointment not because they were rubbish selections but because they were there or thereabouts. The first broke slowly and stayed slow; in the second, the selection was third, but I had mentioned the winner….
Doncaster St Leger Meeting Day 1
The Hon has gone to do 3rd lot with Ben Pauling and to take a bacon sarnie off him. I have to find three duvets and a box of linen, all of which seem to have dematerialised but which need to be found because there are house guests tonight and again on Saturday. In between,…
York Ebor Day 4
The Golf is going well and the TV screen is full of bronzed millionaires in the sun. Having done the rounds of Shagaluf a few months ago, the travel bug is once more strengthening its grip on my psyche and urging me to head for the last of the summer sun, somewhere perhaps where the…
York Ebor Meeting Day 3
Two men have been arrested over the fire at the Crooked House pub in Himley, Staffordshire police have said. A 66-year-old man from Dudley and a 33-year-old man from Milton Keynes have been arrested on suspicion of arson with intent to endanger life. The force said both men remained in custody on Thursday and were being questioned…
York Ebor Meeting Day 2 & THE TOUR Championship Tips
So farewell then Yevgeny Prigozhin However hard we practised, no one could say your name but Putin could, and put it on the passenger list. Surprise! EJ Thribb Aged 17½ Talking of possibly too many air miles, Paddington was thought to have simply done too much this calendar year with eight increasingly tough races since…
It was the best of times, it was the worst…
I suppose with hindsight, we should all be thrilled that we haven’t got another bank holiday out of the weekend. Almost everywhere I looked and as far as the eye could see, there were horizons full of cheering fans, all back-slapping and congratulations. We had days earlier smashed the semi-final Aussie result, with all three…