Juliette's 'Weekly Frolic
Sipping champagne on the sunlit terrace, gazing dreamily at the technicolor sky and vaguely won dering where they'd hidden the swimming pool — it was more like an ultra-swish palm beach paradise than the press preview of Sandown Park's £2.1 million grandstand. To be fair midsummer temperatures can't fail to cast a favourable glow on proceedings but the only com plaint I heard came from a col league appalled at the idea of actually having to work there. Whether such a thing is possible he can find out next Saturday when for a mere E1 you can pass judgement on Europe's most luscious racing complex, lovingly modelled from Connemara marble, polished, pre-stressed concrete and a host of other wondrous materials. After cutting the ceremonial tapes the Queen Mother will be retiring to her first floor box overlooking the rhododendron 'walk. While old campaigners will be pleased to know that has escaped the bulldozers, her original green and white box has been sold to Heathfield Park for a useful E10,000, though Lord Wigg once hoped some gullible American might part with ten times that sum.
Racing-wise this is a Variety Club day and not surprisingly the six sponsors have put up a record E25,000-plus in prize money, £0,000 of which belongs to the Green Shield Handicap where My Brief, So Royal and Spring Stone, second, third and fourth in the Peter Hastings Stakes meet on identical terms. A number of horses who ran below expectations in the Ebor have been busily making up for it since. Pelied is an obvious example, but apart from the Leger hero,
Crucible almost overcame his crippling weight at Doncaster. Bywater and Bustler fought out a good finish at York and Sol'Argent breezed home at Windsor. All four are entered for the one and threequarter mile Sportsman Club Handicap, where 9-1 seems pretty fair weight for a horse of Sol'Argent's calibre. The decision to condense the two-day Sandown fixture into one not only provides a bumper opening programme, but tactfully avoids a clash with Friday's Ayr Gold Cup — the highlight of their four-day Western Meeting, I'm beginning to fancy myself as a selector of sprinters, there was Supreme Gift's ' Portland ' win last week and, of course, that highly impressive coup with Swinging Junior In the 1972 Ayr race. Spanish Gold, a close second then, carries his years well, while the fouryear-old Day Two has won three of his last four starts. Passable credentials if only you didn't have to be a three-year-old to possess any sort of chance in this Scottish cavalry charge, seven have won in the last decade and though greatly fearing he may be favourite, Fabled Diplomat looks most likely to keeo up the tally. . An equally difficult problem is presented by Wednesday's Ladbroke Ayr Handicap where the de ciding pin finally falls on Father Christmas who has alternately fin ished first and nowhere in five races this season. Unfortunately he's due for a nought but could be inconsistent in that respect as well.
Assets: E85.89. Outlay: E3 to win Sol'Argent, Fabled Diplomat and Father Christmas.
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