Rest of Royal Ascot

The rest of the card looks very difficult for punters with 4 races with 20+ runners and all wide open. We start with the Group Three Jersey Stakes for 3yo´s over 7 furlongs, and have narrowed this down to 3 runners- Godolphin´s Tawhid (Saeed bin Suroor/ Silvestre de Sousa), third in the German 2,000 Guineas and probably better over this trip, Gale Force Ten (Aidan and Joseph O´Brien), runner-up in the Irish version and 4th in the French Guineas and therefore the class act here, and Garswood (Richard Fahey/ Pat Smullen), strongly fancied by his shrewd trainer and ridden by one of our favourite jockeys.

German classic form is also represented by Senafe (Marco Botti/ Neil Callan), who runs in the Sandringham handicap for 3yo filllies over a mile at 18.35 following her good third place at Düsseldorf. Obviously she is better than a handicapper, but so are some of the others in this really tricky event. We nominate Hint of a Tint (David Wachman/ Fran Berry), Bracing Breeze (Dermot Weld/ Smullen), Mango Diva (Sir Michael Stoute/ Ryan Moore) and Woodland Aria (John Gosden/ William Buick) as the main dangers.

Even more difficult is the Royal Hunt Cup, a mile handicap at 17.25 with 30 runners. The bookies love this race, as dozens of runners (literally) will be well backed and anything is possible. Two factors must be bortne in mid - the effect of the draw, still inconclusive but yresterday´s results Show a slight bias towards the hiugh numbers- and the going. At the moment it is good, verging on good to firm, and it is warm and sunny; however heavy showers are forecast later in the day. Should heavy rain fall, then the lightweights Spa´s Dancer (James Eustace/ Ryan Moore) and Captain Bertie (Charlie Hills/ James McDonald) could come into the reckoning; otherwise we take last year´s winner Prince of Johanne (Tom Tate/ John Fahy) and the well-handicapped Fury (William Haggas/ Joseph O´Brien) and Directorship (Paul Chamings/ Dame O´Neill) as our 3 against the field.

The Queen Mary for 2yo fillies over 5 furlongs at 18.00 has 24 runners, only 2 of which have not so far won. One of them ironically is our fancy Oriel, Richard Hughes´ choice from 4 runners trained by father-in-law Richard Hannon. Beldale Memory (Clive Cox/ Jamie Spencer) is obviously a big danger after winning both her starts in excellent style.

The Irish had a very successful opening day to the meeting and could have more winners today; we especially like Duntle (Wachman/ Wayne Lordan) in the Group Two race for fillies at 16.05, where Chigun (Lady Jane Cecil/ Tom Queally) and Dank (Stoute/ Moore) could be her most dangerous opponents.