6 more poor meetings today

Very little to get excited about at today´s 6 meetings, this afternoon we have flat racing from Chepstow, Newcastle and Nottingham and this evening jumping from Newton Abbot and all-weather flat racing from Chelmsford and Dundalk (Ireland).

The "best" race is Newcastle´s 7 furlongs handicap at 17.50 CET. George Cinq (Michael Bell/ Louis Steward) is the likely favourite here, having finished runner-up on his last 3 starts, twice on the all-weather. His performance at Doncaster last week was not bad, but we are worried by his poor strike rate.Obsidian (Richard Fahey/ Tony Hamilton) is an obvious danger, having won a maiden at Thirsk last week and is possdibly well handicapped, but our preference is for top-weight Sir Robert Cheval (Marco Botti/ Shane Grey); he also has a poor strike rate but has been running in much better company. The 10 furlongs handicap here an hour earlier is also interesting; Taghreeb (Brian Meehan/ Dane O´Neill) is unbeaten in two starts, and although that form does not actuallly amount to much, he could be thrown in here off a mark of only 82.

With the stable in top form, Elle Shade (John Gosden/ Nicky Mackay) is of obvious interest in the handicap for 3yo fillies at 16.30 at Nottingham; this is another lightly-raced runner who could be much better than her rating suggests, as her only two starts were back in February on the all-weather. She is out of German champion filly Elle Danzig, and another Godolphin runner today out of a German Group One winner is the very lightly-raced Royal Flag (Saeed bin Suroor/ James Doyle) who runs at Chelmsford this evening at 20.50. The 5yo gelding is out of Gonbarda, already dam of champion Farhh. The fact that he has only ever run 4 times is a negative, but he has at least been placed every time and he can possibly get off the mark here.