6 meetings today

Once again, very poor racing at today´s 6 meetings, 2 of which are over jumps. Most interesting event in this discipline is the veterans handicap chase over 3 3/4 miles at 16.55 CET at the pretty Lake District track Cartmel. This could go to Irish raider Volcanic Rock (JA Staunton/ Derek O´Connor), who has a good record here. Petite Margot (Nigel and Sam Twiston-Davies) just squeaked home last time at Perth; she has a 5 lbs penalty for that narrow win, but still looks the main danger.

At Nottingham, Al Zir (Saeed bin Suroor/ Frankie Dettori) has only two opponents in the mile conditions race at 17.15 and looks a nar certinty. The handicap over the same distance for 3yo fillies at 17.50 looks much more tricky, but Submission (Luca Cumani/ Kieren Fallon) and Manaaber (Barry and Richard Hills) look the likeliest candidates.

The 3yo handicap over 6 furlongs at 20.40 at Ripon this evening should go to Elusive Prince (David Barron/ Lee Newman), an easy CD winner last time, with top-weight Bassett Road (Tom Dascombe/ Ross Atkinson) the main danger.

At Kempton there are two tough handicaps, for 3yo´s over a mile at 21.50 and for older horses over 10 furlongs at 20.20. Point North (Jeremy Noseda(/ William Buick) is going for a hat-trick in the latter event; his main target is the Royal Hunt Cup, but he needs to win here to be sure of a place in the field at Royal Ascot. Richard Hannon saddles two runners in the former event, Humdrum (Richard Hughes) and Sinfonico (Ryan Moore), both with chances, but we think that Orientalist (Eve Johnson Houghton/ Tom Queally) could run well here at big price; he has been dropped in the weights and ran well for a long time in a hot race at Haydock last time.

There are huge fields at the Irish meeting at Tipperary. "The bigger the field, the bigger the certainty" is an old racing truism, and Zabarajad (Jphn Oxx/ Johnny Murtagh) looks the best bet here in the 7 1/2 furlongs maiden at 19.30. He was 6th last time in the Irish 2000 Guineas and meets much lesser opposition here.