Gowran Park today

Easily the best racing today comes from Ireland with Gowran Park staging a good jumps card. Main event is the Grade Two Galmoy Hurdle over 3 miles at 15.25 CET, which looks a two horse race between last year´s winner Zaidpour (Willie Mullins/ Ruby Walsh) and Bog Warrior (Tony Martin /Davy Russell). The latter is also a top performer over fences, but has shown really smart form over hurdles on his last two starts, beating Solwhit last time; there is very little between the pair but Bog Warrior gets 4 lbs from his rival, which could well swing it. The card opens with a 4yo hurdle at 14.25,with 3 recent winners who should have the race between them; German-bred Hartside (Noel Meade/ Russell) was arguably lucky last time and must prove that that form was no fluke, while Dalasiri (Sabrina Harty/ Andrew Lynch) landed a huge gamble last time at Cork. However the selection has to be Dogora (Mullins/ Walsh), who won with the greatest of ease at Limerick and is expected to go on to bet ter things.

The big betting race is the Thyestes Chase, a valuable handicap over an extended 3 miles at 16.25. With 18 runners, this is wide open; owner JP McManus owns 3 of them and although his retained jockey Tony McCoy is on Colm Murphy´s The Westener Boy, all the money has come for Outlaw Pete (John and Josh Halley), winner of a cross-country at Cheltenham before Christmas and extremely well handicapped. The opposition includes last year´s second and third, Tullintain and Jadanti, but in our view the most dangerous opponents are Bishopsfurze (Mullins/ Walsh), who is saddled with top weight, and heavy ground specialist Sole Witness (Colin McBratney/ Ben Dalton).

The two all-weather meetings in the U.K. are low grade and of very little interest. For those looking for a longshot to back each-way, we very speculatively suggest Ann Stokell´s Island Express at 14.45 at Lingfield and Vhujon (Peter Grayson/ Liam Keniry) at 18.05 at Kempton.