5 poor meetings today

We have the Guineas meeting at Newmarket (where it rained heavily last night) to look forward to at the weekend, but today´s cards are frankly dreadful and 21 of the 22 flat races in the U.K. are class 5 or 6, with prize-money almost always under 2,000 GBP to the winner. The exception is the 3yo handicap over 7 furlongs at 16.40 CET at Lingfield, which we hope will be won by Godolphin´ s Ihtiraam (Saeed bin Suroor/ Frankie Dettori).

The Teofilo filly is not one of the stable´s atars, but she won her only start last season- beating an odds-on favourite - and may have been let in lightly here. The two Richard Hannon runners Beach Candy (Richard Hughes) and Jumeirah Palm Star (Shane Levey) look the main dangers.

At Musselburgh we like Le Chat d´Or (Michael Dods/ Paul Mulrennan) in the mile handicap at 16.00. Still lightly raced, he got off the mark at Redcar in a style that suggested that more wins can follow. The most interesting feature of the card at Brighton is that Mirco Demuro has been booked to ride Mark Johnston´s Heavy Metal in the 2yo maiden at 18.05. In our opinion the Italian is one of the best jockeys in the world and he is spending the summer as a freelance based in Newmarket. We are not saying this horse will win - he was well beaten on his debut - but as Mirco´s only ride he must be considered seriously.

The only jumps racing is at Hereford where fields are very small and the 2 mile handicap chase at 17.50 is the best event. Even wíth only 5 runners, this is still tricky, but we hope that German-bred Oldrik (Philip Hobbs/ Richard Johnson) can score. The prize-money is better at the Irish meeting at Tipperary, but the heavy going will make things difficult. We expect that Aidan O´Brien and Dermot Weld will between them dominate affairs.