UK Horse Racing Tips

Josephine Gordon, who turns 27 in May, 2020, had ridden just one winner when she became apprenticed to Stan Moore, but rode her second winner in June, 2015 and by the end of that season had increased her winning tally to 16, including 9-81 for the Lambourn trainer. Thereafter, her riding career flourished, with the 2016 season yielding 87 winners in total, including 50 between April 30 and October 15, which was sufficient to make her champion apprentice. Indeed, she became just the third female jockey to win the apprentices’ title, after Amy Ryan in 2011 and Hayley Turner in 2005.

The following season, Gordon left Stan Moore to become stable jockey to Hugo Palmer in Newmarket and, initially, the move proved very fruitful indeed. Gordon rode her first Pattern race winner, Koropick, in the Chipchase Stakes at Newcastle for her new employer on July 1, 2017 and brought up a hundred winners for the season when partnering Thunderbolt Rocks, also trained by Palmer, to victory at Wolverhampton on November 25. In so doing, she became only the second female jockey, after Hayley Turner in 2008, to ride a hundred winners in a calendar year. She was on a winning streak of the like only seen by those winning on the best casinos online. All told, Gordon racked up 106 winners, including 33 for Palmer.

It would be fair to say that Josephine Gordon has found winners much more difficult to come by since the end of the 2017 season. Notwithstanding a hand injury that put her out of action for a month, she rode just 56 winners, including 24 for Hugo Palmer, which led to her relinquishing her role as stable jockey to ride freelance in 2019. That year, Gordon rode just 38 winners and in 2020, so far, she has yet to visit the winners’ enclosure; in fact, at the time of writing, she is enduring a ‘cold’ spell lasting 76 days and 54 rides.

With much doom and gloom around and a world on pause, it’s such a relief to have horse racing back on our screens. This Saturday brings us one of the highlights of the racing calendar, the Investec Derby. The highly competitive and prestigious contest has serious prize money on offer and attracts the cream of the crop of three year olds.

Trainer Andrew Balding will be hoping that he comes out on top of the day with current second favourite Kameko, who received a boost after his recent convincing 2000 Guineas win in June. The trainer definitely has his eyes on the Derby prize.

“He talks about it more than anything else. Ever since I’ve known Andrew that’s been what he’s wanted more than anything. We’re all dreaming really. Imagine if.” said his wife Anna to Betway.

The race also features the likes of current favourite English King, as well as Russian Emperor and the Aidan O’Brien trained Mogul. In the Youtube Feature Balding talks about the possibility of winning the Derby and what it would mean to him to follow in his Father’s footsteps. Ian Balding, now 81, memorably won the 1971 Derby with Mill Reef. Can history repeat itself? Tune into ITV1 at 4.55pm on Saturday 4th July to find out.

Born in Enfield, Greater London in 1952, Terry Ramsden rose to prominence in the early Eighties. He amassed a multi-million pound fortune by speculating on the Japanese stock market and gambling heavily, particularly on horse racing. With his trademark shoulder-length hair and shiny suits, Ramsden was every inch the archetypal self-made Essex man of the Thatcherite era and made no secret of his wealth.

In 1985, Ramsden reportedly won £2 million on the filly Katies, whom he had bought for £500,000 immediately before her victory, at 20/1, in the Irish 1,000 Guineas at the Curragh. By 1987, the annual turnover of Glen International, an Edinburgh-based company that Ramsden had purchased three years earlier, had increased to a satggering £3.5 billion. While he wasn’t a casino goer, there’s no doubting that he had the equivalent of a high roller mentality of the likes you might find on OnlineCasinoSnoop.com . He had a go hard or go home outlook.

Events did later take a turn for the worse for this larger than life character. With eventual  reported gambling losses of £58 million between 1985 and 1988, Ramsden suffered a further setback when so-called ‘Black Monday, on October 19, 1987, rocked global financial markets and wiped hundreds of millions of pounds of the value of his securities. Glen International collapsed, with debts of £98 million, and Ramsden fled to the United States to escape his creditors, only to be arrested, and jailed, in Los Angeles in 1991 at the request of the Serious Fraud Office. Within a month of his return to Britain, in February, 1992, Ramsden was declared bankrupt, with total debts of nearly £100 million, including over £21 million owed to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.

The following year, he admitted ‘recklessly inducing fresh investment’ in Glen International and received a two-year suspended sentence and, in 1998, was convicted of attempting to conceal £300,000 from his creditors and sentenced to twenty-one months’ imprisonment, of which he served ten. Ramsden was released from prison, to very little fanfare, in 1999 and, although cleared by the Jockey Club to attend racecourses and own racehorses again in 2003, he will be remembered as the man who won, and lost, £150 million in his heyday. Better to have such a wild tale to tell than live life in the slow lane though!

The 2011 Cheltenham Gold Cup was, arguably, the most competitive renewal of what is often referred to as the ‘Blue Riband’ event of British steeplechasing for many years, before or since. The field was by no means the largest ever assembled, but the thirteen runners included Kauto Star, winner in 2007 and 2009, Denman, winner in 2008, the defending champion Imperial Commander and Long Run, a comfortable, 12-length winner of the rearranged King George VI Chase at Kempton on his previous start.

Despite attempting to become the first six-year-old to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup since Mill House, in 1963, Long Run was promoted to 7/2 favourite, ahead of Imperial Commander at 4/1, Kauto Star at 5/1 and Denman at 8/1, with the other nine runners available at 9/1 and upwards. On the prevailing good going, confirmed front-runner Midnight Chase took the field along, but was headed by Kauto Star soon after halfway and, thereafter, the contest developed into a three-horse race between the market leaders, with the exception of Imperial Commander. Nigel Twiston-Davies’ ten-year-old weakened soon after a mistake at the fourth-last fence and was tailed off when pulled up lame, and in distress, before the final fence.

Meanwhile, Kauto Star and Denman duelled all the way up the home straight, but were joined at the second-last fence by Long Run who, despite jumping less than fluently on more than one occasion, had maintained a prominent position throughout the second circuit. Approaching the final fence, it soon became clear that the writing was on the wall for the ‘old guard’ and, on the run-in, Long Run drew clear to win, convincingly by 7 lengths. Denman stayed on gamely to finish second, with Kauto Star fading to finish third, a further 4 lengths away. Winning jockey Sam Waley-Cohen became the first amateur rider since Jim Wilson, thirty years earlier, to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup.