Countdown on for our major Chiefs concert
WE are counting down to the Kaiser Chiefs race night at Ffos Las on Thursday, June 2, the opening day of the Queen’s Jubilee Bank Holiday weekend.
Tickets are £37.50 and include a full evening’s racing followed by a live performance from the band.
The first race is at 5.15pm, with the Kaiser Chiefs on stage at around 8.45pm. We also have fixtures on Monday, May 16, and Saturday, May 28, the latter being Beer and Cider Night.
On Saturday night there was the rare, possibly unprecedented, sight of two Welshmen leading the Flat and National Hunt jockeys’ tables.
Sean Bowen’s treble at Uttoxeter put him at the top of the jump jockeys’ championship for 2022-23, admittedly after only two days of the new season. To begin with, he came in for the ride on Boreen Boy for Olly Murphy. Bowen brought him from the back with a well-timed run to lead halfway up the run-in.
An hour later he rode Francky Du Berlais to win the Staffordshire Plate for his father Peter. The horse was below the mark at which he’d won the Market Rasen Summer Plate a year ago and was strongly fancied to capitalise on it. Connections were confident he could stay the new trip of three miles.
His third winner was for the Martin Keighley yard, with which he has formed a profitable association. Found On made most of the running in a novice chase and despite a mistake at the last, he ran out a comfortable 12-length winner.
He was agonisingly close to a five-timer at Uttoxeter, for he also rode two seconds, one beaten a neck and the other by half a length.
David Probert is still in front of the other flat jockeys in terms of winners this calendar year with 64.
The official championship runs from 2,000 Guineas day to Champions Day, but many think the traditional measure should have been kept, running from the beginning to the end of the turf season.
And those who argue for the calendar year option also have a point.
Probert rode two favourites at Newmarket on Saturday, indicating again how the quality of his rides has improved. They were third and fifth in close finishes.
On Sunday he was fifth on Sandrine in the 1,000 Guineas, beaten less than three lengths. Probert afterwards was confident she’d trained on and there was a big race in her.