The Shergar Cup at Ascot on Saturday, and it is unlike anything else in the calendar. Jockeys come from all over the world to ride in teams, and that single fact makes the meeting genuinely difficult to solve.
The problem is not the horses, it is working out how the races will actually be run. Different jockeys have completely different styles. Some go off ridiculously fast. Some sit and wait at the back the whole way. And even with a horse whose habits you think you know, a different rider gets on and suddenly it is ridden nothing like it usually is.
There should not be team tactics, but it would be naive to think there is not some degree of it. If your teammate is a confirmed front runner and mine needs holding up, there is an obvious conversation to be had about how hard the pace goes. All of which makes getting these right harder than a normal Saturday. Here is where we stand anyway, and as always the first race is free for everybody.
1:35 Shergar Cup Dash: keep it simple and stick with the in-form one
The Shergar Cup Dash is a five furlong sprint, and in sprints we put a lot of weight on current form. Look down this field and you will find horses coming off a sixth, a seventh, and plenty who were well beaten last time. There is one obvious exception.
All Ways Glamorous (Christopher Mason, Mme Marie Velon) is our Top Rated and he is the one in form. He has won his last two starts, at Ffos Las in June and then here at Ascot on 25 July, so he arrives on a roll and over a course he has already proved he handles.
He will most likely go forward and make the running, which is the simplest job in the race to execute and one Marie Velon should have no trouble carrying out. That is where the international element may work for us rather than against us: with riders who will not be intimately familiar with what their mounts usually do, there is every chance a few of them give their horses too much to do. An uncontested lead in a five furlong dash at Ascot is a serious advantage.