Monday 27th July 2015

Not really much to look back at over the weekend, the main story was the Ascot betting chaos that concerned the running or not of Speculative Bid. The entire situation was a farce that took 90 minutes to resolve.

The horse was declared a none runner AFTER the weighed in announcement, this resulted in bookies paying out the full returns on winning bets with no rule 4 deduction and punters wanting their stakes back on Speculative Bid. To make matters worse a further announcement went out much later informing the horse for betting purposes had taken part and no dedications should be warranted, you couldn’t make it up.

Apparently angry punters were demanding stakes back and refused to move calling bookies cheats etc etc, this was all happening just minutes before the King George was due off. Not a good day for Ascot.

The Galway Festival starts this evening, I was lucky enough to go a few years ago with a runner "finished 3rd" and despite the weather it’s a fantastic place and a lot of fun. Trainer Dermot Weld will be looking to have his normal umpteen winners at the meeting, you can do much worse than back him blind over the seven days for a bit of fun.

Glorious Goodwood starts tomorrow, a fixture I’ve always found very hard to find winners at. The meeting will start on soft ground so I’m not confident it will be any easier this time around. Already Gleneagles has been withdrawn and others have followed suit but I’ll bid to find some type of bets over the week.