York, Musselburgh and Carlisle

Today´s British racing is all up north, with flat racing at York at Musselburgh in Scotland, and N.H. racing from Carlisle, which is also not far from the Scottish border. Easily the best racing is at York, and the conditions race over 10 furlongs at 15.45 CET has attracted sme smart performers, notably Kirklees (Saeed bin Suroor/ Frankie Dettori), a Group Two CD winner last year. He was then off the track for a long while, before making a satisfactory comeback when a close fourth to a stable companion in a listed race at Ayr. He finished behind King´s Gambit (Tom Tate/ Jamie Spencer) then, but can be expected to reverse the placings this time. The 7 furlongs handicap at 16.20 looks very tough with 20 runners and the same number line up in the 5 furlongs handicap at 17.30. Obviously there are many possibilities, but our 3 against the field are Prime Exhibit (Richard Fahey/ Paul Hanagan), My Kingdom (Hughie Morrison/ John Fahy) and Desert Creek (Sir Michael Stoute/ Ryan Moore) in the former event, and top-weight Strike up the Band (David Nicholls/ Billy Cray), Oldjoesaid (Kevin Ryan/ Spencer) and Haajes (PT Midgely/ Paul Pickard) in the latter.

Nicholls also saddles the top weight in the 5 furlongs handicap at 16.30 at Musselburgh, this time with son Adrian on board. This is a much weaker race and one possible danger is the mare Look Busy (Alan Berry/ Slade O´Hara), who is not the most consistent but certainly capable of winning in this grade.

The N.H. card at Carlisle is not very exciting, but the novice chase at 15.30 looks interesting. With the Twiston-Davies stable in top form (3 more winners yesterday), C´monthehammers (Paddy Brennan) can be expected to run well, but on hurdles form Alvarado (Howard Johnson/ Timmy Murphy) can be preferred, especially as he won both his starts at this track.