Friday June 24th.

Lots of racing, far too much in my opinion, but not a lot caught my eye.

In the 2-y-o fillies race that opened the card at Doncaster, Colorful Notion won well enough but the one that it might be worth making a note of is, AL MAHMEYA, who was making her debut. Her SP of 3/1 suggested she had been showing something on the gallops but in the race she proved to be much too green. She missed the break and gave them all a start, she then made some headway but Dane O'Neill didn't persevere once it was obvious she wasn't going to trouble the leaders. She will be much better prepared next time.


The Friday evening of Newcastle's Northumberland Plate meeting always has the Gosforth Cup, a very competitive six-furlong handicap, as its highlight. Like many races these days the prize-money has at least stood still perhaps even fallen. Mick Easterby continued his excellent run of form in this type of race this season and took the race with Ancient Cross.
My only thought after watching the race several times is that Adrian Nicholls should have received a ban for his ride on Silaah, who incidentally finished last, the horse constantly wanted to hang left and 'Trotter' didn't seem to make that much effort to keep the horse straight. He interfered with both Jamesway and Racy and it could have resulted in a much worse fashion than it did.


The evening meeting on the July Course at Newmarket got under way with a Class 5 handicap which could possibly throw up a winner or two in the future. The winner, MASTER MYLO, hasn't got the greatest of strike-rates, just three wins from 24 runs but he won in nice style here. Racing with lots of enthusiasm early on and finding a nice finishing effort. Two that finished just out of the places could be interesting; RIO TINTO fourth at 66/1 missed the break and then raced too freely, he made late headway without being thrashed, MARVO ran much the same sort of race and finished fifth at 20/1.


On to the lucky last but not very lucky for RYAN STYLE. Missed the break and almost brought to his knees in a traffic jam approaching the final furlong, he ran on to take third at 20/1. Not a lot of use to anyone reading this now but RYAN STYLE  won at Haydock yesterday, SP 12/1.


Colin