Tuesday 18th June 2019

It’s the start of Royal Ascot today, five great days of racing and a meeting like no other. The very wet weather of late has played and will play a big part in the results. The ground is drying but thunderstorms and up to 50mil of rain could hit around lunchtime. It will be a real shame if that does happen. All the lovely outside bars will be unusable whilst the going will turn back to soft very quickly.

It’s not easy coming up with any selections at Royal Ascot until we know what the weather does. For what it’s worth, Addeybb in the 5:35 likes soft ground and first time cheekpieces could bring out further improvement. If the rain arrives as expected, Addeybb will run a big race. Odds of 7-1 with four places on off looks fair value.

I hear, Too Darn Hot has had a clear run of things for the first time this season. If back to his best, I would expect him to reverse the form with Phoenix Of Spain in the St James’s Palace Stakes at 4:20.

If thunder storms do hit, soft going would turn races into a lottery and we could see strange results. I would suggest holding off on any bets until late as possible.

We head to Stratford with Competition who runs in the 3:30.

We wouldn’t normally run on soft ground but Competition is a buzzy horse that needs to be running every three weeks or so. There isn’t much else he could go for, so we must take our chance. It looks tough for him today off top weight but we’ll see how we go.