Jef­fery Ross

?It's Roy­al As­cot week! In­dis­putably the great­est rac­ing show on earth and with Amer­i­cans and Aus­tralians it's now se­ri­ous­ly in­volved, our five-day spec­tac­u­lar is, def­i­nite­ly, bet­ter than ever.

Dur­ing my thir­ty-years spell of rac­ing, on av­er­age, two-hun­dred and fifty times a year, RA was al­ways the pin­na­cle but since halt­ing my dai­ly rou­tine in the late 1990's, I've en­joyed this great spec­ta­cle more­so, prob­a­bly due to the ex­cel­lent cov­er­age giv­en by BBC and Atther­aces. From my lounge, one can ap­pre­ci­ate there is a fine line be­tween bril­liance and mad­ness with mon­key suits, ladies' fash­ion, par­ties, wan­ton ec­cen­tric­i­ty, etc but thir­ty top-grade races are my main fo­cus and the an­tic­i­pa­tion is ab­solute­ly colos­sal.

It's tough, es­pe­cial­ly for those rac­ing writ­ers/jour­nal­ists who have to work. They will find RA ex­treme­ly de­mand­ing and not for one mo­ment, should their im­mense, col­lec­tive con­tri­bu­tion be un­der­es­ti­mat­ed. Race-read­ers, re­porters, broad­cast­ers, 'blog­ites' and what­ev­er wont know whether it's Man­ches­ter Unit­ed or West In­dies, un­til the last race on Sat­ur­day. What a marathon! Iron­i­cal­ly, most of it has to be 'mut­ed' from my chair.

Si­lence is gold­en and nec­es­sary, when analysing, com­put­ing, in­ter­pret­ing in my in­sa­tiable quest for win­ners. My ul­ti­mate aim is sat­is­fac­tion for read­ers world­wide, who can now log on to www.1de­greeon­line.co.uk for any up­dates, lat­est news that might just give you that vi­tal edge in a tremen­dous bat­tle against 'the en­e­my. At this stage, two races are of par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est, the open­ing day Coven­try Stakes over six fur­longs for two-year-olds and an ex­treme­ly con­trast­ing As­cot Gold Cup, over two and a half miles.

Re­spec­tive­ly, my fan­cies are Red Jazz and Geordieland. Hope­ful­ly, you will find my pre­views on them in­ter­est­ing, in­for­ma­tive and, even­tu­al­ly, re­ward­ing. In the mean­time, there are three meet­ings to­day, Sal­is­bury, Don­cast­er and Strat­ford, where Clas­sic Swain makes a quick reap­pear­ance in the ten-run­ner Novices' Hur­dle over two miles.

Six days ago, Clas­sic Swain land­ed our nap with an un­chal­lenged suc­cess. Ac­cord­ing to the time-hand­i­cap, there's no rea­son why Paul Nicholls' charge shouldn't fol­low-up. Palace Moon and Silk Trail are worth punt­ing at the Wilt­shire course and on Town Moor I'll back Twist­ed each-way in the Maid­en Stakes over twelve fur­longs. Any­thing like a re­pro­duc­tion of his re­cent form guar­an­tees a place, the ba­sis of a sol­id place bet.

?SE­LEC­TIONS

?STRAT­FORD:

9.10 CLAS­SIC SWAIN (nap)

SAL­IS­BURY:

10.05 SILK TRAIL;

10.40 PALACE MOON.

DON­CAST­ER:

11.35 TWIST­ED (e.w.)