Sunday 1st July -

A Pinch and a Punch..... Thank the lord for a new month, June was pretty horrid for me. The Tennis has been saving our bacon the last week, and hopefully will continue next week. Some decent looking races today, Sunday racing is a decent standard nowadays. Plus the first proper stage of Le Tour. In the golf Hunter Mahan threw away a 2 shot lead last night, which I'm not going to lie, upset me a little. He's still thereabouts, 2 shots off the lead, but with a prowling Tiger about he faces a huge task to get his head back in the game tonight. Then there is the small matter of a football match tonight.

HORSES

CHANTILLY

315 GATHERING

CURRAGH

310 TRUE VERDICT
345 NATIVE KHAN
420 MAYBE
525 MIDNIGHT SOPRANO (NAP)

SALISBURY

305 WOODEN KING
340 ANTON DOLIN
415 CRUCK REALTA

UTTOXETER

150 KINGS DESTINY
330 MUMBLES HEAD (NB)
405 FOXESBOW
510 TORNADE D'ESTRUVAL

WINDSOR

215 GOLD SHOW
245 RAZORBILL
315 JUNGLE BEAT
350 MISS DIVA
500 PURPLE AFFAIR

NEWBIE CORNER

MAMA QUILLA 215 WINDSOR

TOUR DE FRANCE

Todays stage will likely finish in a bunch, with no teams wishing to yield time to a breakaway this early. With only 1 sprint point expect a small group to get away early for the small mountain points. KOM tip Johnny Hoogerland is likely to be involved. A CAT4 finish will remove Mark Cavendish from the reckoning here and could hand initiative to a classic specialist. 4/1 on Belgian PHILIPPE GILBERT is a gift, he will be hungry for this as the finish is in Belgium, as is the start, and the rest of the stage. Expect the stronger sprinters to be near the fore, I'd probably consider Ed Boasson-Hagen as my danger for this.

FOOTBALL

I'll tell you the truth, I don't know who is going to win this, the Italians have come here with their best and most creative side since the days of Roberto Baggio. Pirlo has been Pir-less in this tournament, and bar a Zidane style moment of madness will likely win Player of the Tournament, he is cetainly the media choice anyway, but UEFA do work in funny ways so there is no guarantee. Hopefully the Spanish will respect the occasion and do away with their ridiculous 4-6-0 formation, again with the sheer arrogance of the Spanish there is no guarantee that this will happen either. I think it will have to be Italy to take the initiative to make a game of this. Otherwise Spain will just bore everybody to death with their side-to-side back-front-back game. Portugal showed them no respect, and almost got the result, I think the Italians are certainly more threating than Portugal and a goal early on will shake things up. I hope Italy win, Del Bosque gets sacked for his nonsense and we get treated to proper football form the clearly world class Spanish players in the next world cup. Besides if Italy win we, as English, can hold our heads high and say that we didn't lose a game, won our group and went out on Penalties to the European champions, strict formlines would match to given that we beat Spain back in November last year. So come on Italy and Super Mario.
I'm not going to bet but my prediction is 2-1 ITALY.

Good Luck and Happy Punting