Andrasch Starke in Shergar Cup at Ascot

Today´s Shergar Cup at Ascot has six very open handicaps on the card and there are 4 teams representing the U.K. and Ireland (James Doyle, Kieren Fallon, Kevin Manning); rest of Europe (Ioritz Mendizibal, Gerald Mossé and our German Champion Andrasch Starke); rest of the world (Yasuwari Iwata, Joao Moreira and Gary Stevens) and a Girls Team (Lisa Allpress, Cathy Gannon, and Rosie Napravnik). They will be wearing team colours, which will make life difficult for the commentators. Points are awarded on the following basis: 15 for the winner, then 10, 7, 5 and 3 for the fifth home.

There will be trophies for the winning team and also the top individual scorer. As the races are all worth 30,000 GBP this could be quite a lucrative afternoon for a jockey riding a couple of winners.

Obviously we hope that Starke does well His best chance is probably Brian Ellison´s Racy in the 5 furlongs dash at 15.05 CET. Racy was fourth in last week´s Stewards Cup and was earlier runner-up in a huge field over this CD and a repetition of those forms would give him a a good chance here.

Starke also had a decent chance on Richard Hannon´s Tassel in the concluding 6 furlongs handicap at 16.50, despite her rather misleading form figures. Mark Johnston saddles five runners - half the field - in the 1 1/2 mile handicap for 3yo´s at 15.50, with Starke on the lightly-raced Statutory; the trainer seems to prefer Bushel (Kieren Fallon), but Broughton (Gary Stevens)-once the highest priced yearling at the Baden-Baden sales - is also a possibility in our view and so is the Irish top-weight Cardinal Palace (JJ Murphy/ Cahy Gannon).

Starke also teams up wth Good Morning Star for Johnston in the 2 mile handicap at 14.30; this one is very inconsistent, but good enough on his day. but this looks a very tough race. Rod Millman´s Icebuster is another outsider for Starke at 16.15 in another very tricky event; there is a big tip here for Willie Wagtail (Ed Walker/ Kieren Fallon).