Historic events at Carlisle, Salisbury

Carlisle stages its most important card of the season today, featuring the Carlisle Bell and the Cumberland Plate, two of the oldest races of the British turf. They are now handicaps, the former over a mile at 16.30 CET and the latter over 1 mile 3 furlongs at 17.05. Both have 17 runners and look wide open. Our 3 against the field in the Bell are Levitate (Alan McCabe/ William Twiston-Davies), a winner last time at Doncaster, Miami Gator (Elaine Burke/ Conor Harrison), last year´s winner and penalised for winning under this jockey last week at Hamilton, and the likely favourite Barwick (Mark Tompkins/ Chris Catlin), who looks much improved this season. Tompkins and Catlin have a chance in the Plate as well with Smoky Oakey, owned by actress Judi Dench. He won the ;Lincoln in 2008, but his form has been very up and down since, but this distance could be ideal nowadays and he has been dropped a lot by handicapper. But the interesting one here is Lexi´ s Boy (Donald McCain/ Grah am Lee), who won 4 races on the all-weather last year, but has shown excellent and improving form over hurdles this year for his present handler.

Salisbury also stages two traditional handicaps, including the Bibury Cup for 3yo ´s over 1 1/2 miles at 17.55. Even with only 6 runners this looks very open, with Rye House (Sir Michael Stoute/ Ryan Moore) the likely favourite, and Moon Trip (Mark Johnston/ Kietren Fallon) and Rule Book (Richard Hannon/ Richard Hughes) the main dangers. The mile handicap at 17.25 is even trickier. Leviathan (Tony Newcombe/ Tom Queally) won this last year, but on recent form the lightly-raced Trade Commissioner (John Gosden/ William Buick) and Shamaal Nibras (Hannon/ Hughes) can be preferred.

Hughes is one of several jockeys travelling on to Kempton´s evening meeting, where he has good chances with Ian Wood´s Riva´s Rhapsody at 20.50 and Andrew Balding´s Communicator an hour later; in the latter race we also like ex-German Toughess Danon (Brendan Powell father and son), sold to go hurdling, in which sphere he has not been very successful, but very well handicapped on the flat.