An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
The annual running of the Betfair Imperial Cup Handicap Hurdle at Sandown means that the start of the Cheltenham Festival is only three days away. As usual though, tomorrow’s race (2.25 p.m.) is a noteworthy event in its own right: a competitive affair with 17 runners due to line up for a contest worth more
The ground will play a key role in the outcome of the big race at Kelso tomorrow, the bet365 Morebattle Hurdle (3.30 p.m.) worth nearly £62,000 to winning connections. The going description is currently ‘good to soft, soft in places’ but with a day and a half of winter sunshine forecast it could well be nearer
In racing, superstitions are rife. I once saw a trainer remonstrate with an owner for displaying a green handkerchief: green, he insisted, was unlucky (although it doesn’t seem to work that way for owners Simon Munir and Isaac Souede, whose ‘double green’ colours have been carried to success in many top races). Henrietta Knight, who
The confused world of Duhan van der Merwe must seem more confused than usual after last weekend. The Scotland winger with an accent that sounds more Western Cape than Western Isles found himself crowned man of the match despite Scotland’s defeat by England at Twickenham, while at the same time being scapegoated as the man
The first months of the year are a tough time to inhabit this corner of the planet. First there’s January to contend with – darker than Himmler’s sock drawer and full to the rafters with post-festive self-flagellation. Then we’re into February, which is just more of the same: January by another name. No wonder the powers-that-be
The entries for the Cheltenham Festival handicaps races were announced this week and so now seems a good time to try to steal a little value from bookmakers, with the four days of elite jump racing just around the corner next month. We still don’t yet know the weights that each horse has been allotted
I was 30 when I first went skiing, and up for absolutely anything. I was a successful party caterer who had just opened my first restaurant. I had a food column for the Daily Mail, and I was about to open Leith’s cookery school. I was sporty, played tennis every Tuesday, rode polo ponies on
Evan Williams has not got as many ‘Saturday horses’ as he once had but he remains a trainer that I like to have on side when he targets some of the bigger handicaps. The form of his stable, with the Cheltenham Festival less than a month away, is good and he had a double at
It’s easy to not quite get the Super Bowl. What exactly is it: a sporting event, a music show, a fashion parade for the world’s coolest pair of shades, a new version of the Chippendales with the hunks wearing tight trousers and skid lids? Or, in its latest incarnation, a chance for the world’s most
Trainer Rebecca Curtis has experienced plenty of challenging seasons since her successes in the early 2010s, when her owners included the legendary Irishman J.P. McManus and her numerous winners included four at the Cheltenham Festival. She eventually added a fifth Festival winner in 2020 when the 50-1 shot Lisnagar Oscar landed the Stayers’ Hurdle. As
A good place to catch the highbrow sports journalist in action is the ‘Pseuds Corner’ column of PrivateEye, where he (and it’s always a ‘he’) regularly appears. Here you will discover that to contemplate Manchester City’s mid-season loss of form is ‘like sitting in Rome in 410 and watching the Visigoths pour over the horizon’,
Unless your Wi-Fi has been down this week, you’ll be aware that David Beckham has got his kit off again. He’s back in his underwear for a ‘steamy’ (Daily Mail) ‘full frontal’ (Daily Mail again, though it really isn’t – and I had to watch it, dispassionately I stress, three times for the purposes of this
For the second weekend in a row, there is plenty of top-class racing to look forward to on both sides of the Irish Sea. The two-day Dublin Racing Festival will be hosting the highest-class fare but Sandown and Musselburgh both offer fascinating cards too. I will start closer to home where Virgin Bet is sponsoring
Winter’s almost done and spring’s on the way. We can tell because the Six Nations is about to muscle into view – with the battle of the world’s best national anthems as Wales meet France at the Stade de France on Friday evening. This year’s tournament could be even better than last year’s, but we
It is around 3 a.m. in Northern Ireland in the early 2000s as two British soldiers share a dank ditch waiting for the dawn. ‘What will you do when you leave the army, Sir?’ asks Corporal Jordan Wylie. ‘I’m going to train racehorses,’ says Captain Jamie Snowden. ‘And I’m going to make some money and
Tomorrow’s Cheltenham Trials Day, as its name suggests, usually throws up plenty of clues to which horses will be winning at the festival on the same course in less than two months’ time. There is no doubt which horse running tomorrow is most likely to triumph at the festival itself and that is Constitution Hill.
The Norwegian footballer Erling Haaland will, upon commencement of his new nine-year contract extension with Manchester City, be paid £1 million a week. On pocketing his first colossal pay cheque (which includes sponsorship income), Haaland will cruise past his rivals in the traditional European leagues. Real Madrid’s Kylian Mbappé is forced to get by on
This is a big weekend for two of Britain’s best young trainers, both with the Christian name of Harry. Neither will want to come away empty-handed from the next three days of racing because both men are giving racecourse outings to some of the best horses in their respective yards. I will start with Harry
Have you booked your tickets for the World Test Championship yet? Did you even know it’s on? What seemed like a pretty good idea has become mired in the mind-numbing complexity of the scoring. Currently England, who you might think of as quite a good Test-playing nation, are languishing in sixth place, not least because
39 min listen
On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Catherine Lafferty argues that the drive to reduce teenage pregnancies enabled grooming gangs (1:27); following Luke Littler’s world championship victory, Michael Simmons says that Gen Z is ruining darts (6:32); Paul Wood looks at the return of Isis, and America’s unlikely ally in its fight against the terrorist group (10:35);
The ground staff at Kempton lost their battle against the elements this morning which was a great shame as there would have been a fine card on offer tomorrow if the freezing temperatures had subsided. So, with Kempton abandoned and with the Cheltenham Festival just two months away, I am going to turn my attention
The Unibet Veterans’ Handicap Chase at Sandown tomorrow (3 p.m.) is a fascinating contest with a first prize of more than £50,000. Any of the nine runners could win if performing to their best but, with the field aged between 11 and 13, most of them are now well past their prime. Sam Brown and
28 min listen
Dame Sarah Storey is Britain’s most successful Paralympian of all time. She is a 45-time World champion, a 23-time European champion, and a 77-time world recorder breaker – including times she broke her own records. Earlier this year she won her 18th and 19th Olympic golds at the Paris 2024 games. On the podcast, Sarah
You would have to be living a very sheltered life not to have noticed that the Premier League this season is one of the best and the brightest for years. Mainly because it is not permanently dominated by the Big Six – though admittedly one of Liverpool, Arsenal or Chelsea is almost certain to win
I have already put up two horses ante-post for today’s Coral Welsh Grand National at Chepstow (2.50 p.m.) and with mixed results. Monbeg Genius, tipped each way at 20-1 last month, has been steadily backed ever since and, until this morning, was vying for favouritism. Manofthepeople, tipped each way a week ago at 50-1, has
Dual-purpose trainer Hughie Morrison usually has one of two jumping stars to supplement his talented flat horses at his Berkshire stables. In recent years, Not So Sleepy has been the flag-bearer for the yard over the winter months but he was retired, aged 12, after winning on the level at Newbury in September. If Morrison
GABORIOT was my fancy for last weekend’s Boylesports Becher Chase until the weather intervened and the Aintree meeting was cancelled. Joint trainers Oliver Greenall and Josh Guerriero have, however, wasted little time in finding their eight-year-old gelding a new target in the form of a big handicap tomorrow. I am going to stay loyal to
It was quite a year for some of the worst of sport – America’s golfers, already among the richest and greediest men on the planet, wanting a massive extra bung to pitch up for the Ryder Cup and, equally noisome, Bill Sweeney, chief executive of the Rugby Football Union, paying himself £1.1 million while announcing
The two big races tomorrow, the BoyleSports Becher Chase at Aintree and the Betfair Tingle Creek Chase, could hardly be more different contests. The former is a 12-runner competitive handicap run over three miles and two furlongs on the Grand National course, the latter is an eight-runner Grade 1 race, with all the horses running
