rest of York

The main supporting feature is the Group Two Lonsdale Cup over an extended 2 miles at 15.40 CET. Times Up (Ed Dunlop/ Ryan Moore) is a CD specialist and won this last year for the present trainer´s father. He certainly has god prospects again, but we just prefer Simenon (Willie Mullins/ Johnny Murtagh), a smart hurdler but also very useful on the flat as he showed when runner-up in this year´s Gold Cup at Ascot.

Colour Vision (Saeed bin Suroor/ James Doyle) won last year´s Gold Cup but has struggled a bit since and jockey bookings suggest that Ahzeemah (Silvestre de Sousa) is Godolphin´s main hope here; he was runner-up last time in the Goodwood Cup and is remarkably consistent, but we think the Ascot form is probably stronger.

The other group race is the Strensal Satkes over 9 furlongs at 16.05. This looks weak and Pavlosk (Sir Michael Stoute/ Ryan Moore) looks by far the most liklely winner. City Style (Charlie Appleby/ Silvestre de Sousa) ran badly on his only start in the U.K., this year, but had some decent form in Meydan and is probably the main danger.

The handicaps are as tricky as ever, with the uncertainty about the going and the draw adding to the difficulty. Scatter Dice (Mark Johnston/ Franny Norton) and Rio´s Rosanna (Roger Whitaker/ Russell Kennemore) are our main fancies over 1 1/2 miles at 14.55, and Equity Risk (Kevin Ryan/ Neil Callan) and Short Squeeze (Hugo Palmer/ Martin Dwyer) over a mile at 17.55.