3 poor meetings today

A very slow start to the week and nothing that grabs the Imagination at today´s 3 flat meetings in the U.K. The best race of the day is probably the 5 furlongs handicap at 17.00 CET at Leicester. Top weight Milly´s Gift (Clive Cox/ Robert Tart) has been running in big handicaps and must have a chance in this grade, but we prefer Smart Daisy K (Andrew Hollinshead/ Jack Duern), who showed improved form to win at Bath last time and is clearly well suited by fast ground.. Should rain arrive - which looks unlikely-. we would switch to veteran Judge ´n´Jury (Ron Harris/ Cam Hardie), but this old boy seems to need cut in the ground these days.

Mark Johnston is usually the trainer to follow at Hamilton and he has several chances today; the ones we like best are Zanouska at 15.50 and Stetchworth at 17.20, both partnered by Joe Fanning.

At Kempton the first 5 races are all for 2yo maidens and are probably best left alone; there are hot favourites from top stables in most of them, but also some well-bred and unexposed newcomers. The only race in which older horses can run is the final mile handicap at 18.40, which looks very tricky. In fact we expect the 3yo´s to dominate here and select Royal Preserve (Andrew Balding/ David Probert), who has been off since the spring. Matravers (Sir Michael Stoute/ Ryan Moore) won over this CD last time and is the most obvious danger.