Friday Racing

Racing at York continues today with the Group 3 Yorkshire Cup the feature at 4.05pm.  Amiloc is the short priced favourite for the race for the Ralph Beckett and Rossa Ryan team and I think he will be hard to beat.  He was last see finishing fourth in the Breeders Cup turf and he may well still be on the upgrade.  There is plenty of good flat racing action today and Day One of the Lockinge meeting takes place at Newbury as well as action at Newmarket and up in Scotland at Hamilton.  In Ireland they have a meeting under each code with jumping at Kilbeggan and flat action at Leopardstown.  Ryan Moore is over there at Leopardstown to ride Scandinavia in the Group 3 Levmoss Stakes at 7.22pm.  He is 1/6 in the betting and this feature race should be a formality for the high class four year old colt who won both the Goodwood Cup and the St Leger last season.

The jumping action today comes from Aintree this evening, their last meeting before a summer break.  The final race on the card is a point to point bumper which looks competitive and a few of these might be for sale should they run well.  I hope they have all eaten their carrots as this race is off at 8.40pm!  Carrillo for Chris Barber and James King combination is favourite and I know that team are in very good form at the moment and he could take all the beating.  James King has been on board a couple of the other runners in the race and looks to have chosen this one so hopefully he has chosen well.  There are some interesting horses from some shrewd trainers in this race so I shall be watching with interest!  

I was reading that former top jockeys Ruby Walsh, Fran Berry and Emmet McNamara have combined to form a new venture to assist jockeys with professional off-track support.  They plan to act as mentors as well as providing a service to help them maximize opportunities throughout a jockeys career.  Complete Sports Management as they will be known already has 40 jockeys signed up along with professional brands to assist jockeys with things such as commercial representation, PR and Media, tax and accounts financial planning, travel logistics and group partner deals.  It sounds a good idea to me and I am sure they will be spreading their wings to this side of the Irish Sea at some point as well.

Last night in the football, Bolton secured another 1-0 win against Bradford to progress to the the play-off final of league one, winning 2-0 on aggregate.  Tonight there is one Premiership match between Aston Villa and Liverpool which kicks off at 8pm.

Rory McIlroy has not made a great start in the US PGA Golf and finished his round at 4 over.  Having said that, it looked tough conditions out there for all the players with the tie for the lead only at -3 so he is not that far back but just with plenty of players in between!

A woodpecker visited the Petrified Forest.

He said it was impeccable!

Have a great Friday!