An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
Picture the scene. I’m in the New Forest, riding in a bicycle race. It looks like I’m on course for a personal best, perhaps even first place. I’m well-fuelled and feeling strong. Then I hit traffic. The road is too narrow to slip alongside the line of five or six cars in front of me.
The Arc weekend at Longchamp – well worth a visit if you have never been racing in France – is just over a week away and now seems a good time to place a couple of bets at this most prestigious of meetings. Set on the outskirts of Paris in the Bois de Boulogne, Longchamp
Top owners are quitting horse racing because bookmakers nervous of a government and a Gambling Commission that know remarkably little about the horse-racing industry and ignore even the modicum they do know are making it harder and harder for them to have a significant bet, closing the accounts of those who refuse to acquiesce to
When John Lumley was a baby, his mother placed him in his carrycot at one end of the tennis court in the leafy village of Holyport in Berkshire, and drove balls at him. I should clarify that John was perfectly safe. The tennis in question was real tennis: the old-fashioned version of the game, which
Cast your minds back to 2005, a time when it was considered cool to record your favourite song to use as a ringtone on your phone, iPod Nanos were everywhere, the Crazy Frog drove every parent in the country crazy, and Ronaldinho was named the best football player on the planet. A lot has changed
The Saturday of Doncaster’s St Leger meeting offers something for everyone: the fifth and final ‘classic’ of the season and a ridiculously competitive sprint handicap for starters, with much more besides. I will start by looking at the Group 1 Betfred St Leger (tomorrow 3.35 p.m.), which is the longest flat racing classic over a
‘What are you still doing here?’ joked Daniil Medvedev to Novak Djokovic after their US Open tennis final – a lung-busting baseline slugfest featuring jaw-dropping athleticism and brilliant shot-making – had ended in a straight sets win for the Serb. It was his 24th Grand Slam victory. There’s no sign that Djokovic wants to slow
My beloved late father, who was responsible for my love of horse racing, made an annual attempt to land the so-called ‘autumn double’: the two big Newmarket’s handicaps run towards the tail-end of the Flat season. For the best part of half a century, I have followed his lead with a fair degree of success
The last of this season’s big six-furlong sprint handicaps takes place in Scotland three weeks tomorrow. The Virgin Bet Ayr Gold Cup is always a competitive affair with up to 25 runners spread across the course, often splitting into two distinct groups on the near side and the far side of the stands. Last year,
So the end is near… or it certainly will be soon if England’s rugby players carry on trying to do it their way. One thing we can be certain about: England are not going to win the World Cup. There is a chance they might not get out of their group; Argentina are properly good
For political nerds, the revival of Wrexham AFC, under the ownership of Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, has eerie echoes of the history of New Labour. A historic organisation, strongly connected to working-class communities, looks defeated and deflated. A clique of talented smoothies comes along and offers a better tomorrow. Tired of disappointment,
The most likely winner of tomorrow’s Sky Bet Ebor Handicap (3.35 p.m.), the most valuable flat race handicap in Europe, is Sweet William. John and Thady Gosden’s four-year-old gelding is going for a four-timer and he will land a £300,000 first prize if he achieves it. Those canny enough to have bagged fancy prices on
When the nine equine athletes involved in the seven-furlong contest for Newbury’s Saturday highlight, the Group Two BetVictor Hungerford Stakes, strolled around the parade ring there was nowhere else in the world I would have preferred to be. As the sun gleamed off perfectly burnished coats and perfectly toned muscles rippled in sturdy hindquarters I
When you first lay eyes on Morgan’s new Super 3 – a three-wheeled car categorised, intriguingly, as a motorbike in the US – it does take a moment to get your bearings. First, in an age when all cars essentially look the same, this one appears to be back to front. Set wide, two front
York’s Ebor meeting next week is one of the highlights of the racing calendar with four days of quality fare on offer from Wednesday onwards. York is a flat, left-handed track suitable for strong galloping horses yet for some inexplicable reason quite a lot of thoroughbreds fail to act on what should be a fair
Oxford City vs Rochdale at Court Place Farm doesn’t have quite the same ring as Chelsea vs Liverpool at Stamford Bridge, but last Saturday’s match was important all the same. At this level, you feel part of the match, which never happens in an executive box at the Emirates ‘The Hoops’, Oxford’s oldest football club,
It’s official, folks: Harry Kane is off to Germany. England’s captain this morning joined Bayern Munich for an initial £86.4 million. The 30-year-old will sign a four-year contract. The Germans are understandably excited. In the UK, though, most football fans were left scratching their heads. Bayern Munich? Why? Kane could have gone to Saudi Arabia
Amid the fun and games that always accompanies the Shergar Cup meeting at Ascot, there is at least one horse that goes to the Berkshire track on a deadly serious mission. Connections of PRYDWEN are hoping he can win the Dubai Duty Free Shergar Cup Stayers handicap (tomorrow, 2.10 p.m.) for two reasons. Four teams of
On no course in Britain does jockeyship count for more than at undulating, tricksy Goodwood and although Frankie Dettori was able, on his final appearance there, to treat the expectant crowd to a couple of flying dismounts after victories on Epictetus and Kinross, the week’s top rider was clearly Tom Marquand. One racing sage told
The most recent UFC event, UFC 291, was a fascinating spectacle. Of all the compelling fights that took place, the final one, which saw Justin Gaethje face off against Dustin Poirier, was by far the best. Shortly after Gaethje stole the show with a devastating head-kick knockout of Poirier, Conor McGregor took to Twitter – sorry, X – to give
Americans awoke on Sunday morning to find themselves bathing in wave after wave of schadenfreude. In Melbourne, the unthinkable had happened: the US Women’s National Team had been defeated – and eliminated from the football World Cup. The online criticism was unrelenting. ‘They really are equal to the men’s team,’ said The Spectator World’s Stephen L.
In 1884, William Morris gave a lecture to the Hampstead Liberal Club with the title of ‘Useful Work Versus Useless Toil’. His remarks were typically damning of what he saw as the crude philistinism of Victorian capitalism with its mass production of fripperies and of what Marxists call the alienation of labour – the psychological
The all-important ground conditions at Glorious Goodwood have varied from ‘good to soft’ to ‘heavy’ this week and that trend could continue over the next two days with a mixed forecast. Throw in the complications of the draw and the unique undulating track and there are plenty of challenges out there for punters. Starting with
And they said Test cricket was in its death throes! This epic, attention-grabbing, emotion-wringing Ashes series ended in the last minutes of the last hour of the last session of the last day of the last match: who could ask for more? England have had a number of very good captains since Mike Brearley took
The football season gets under way again on Saturday – or at least it does if your team isn’t in the Premier League, which starts a week later. My beloved Queens Park Rangers are off to Vicarage Road to take on Watford and I’ll be there with my three sons to cheer them on. We
The Grade 1 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Qipco Stakes, first run at Ascot in 1951, has lost some of its lustre in recent years. Many of best middle-distance horses have swerved the race and it has often been left with small fields of only modest quality. Yet tomorrow’s race (Ascot, 3.40 p.m.) is
The world’s top footballers now have a bigger following than the clubs they play for. Fans are beginning to support superstar players as they move around from club to club rather than sticking with a team – and this threatens the very foundations of the sport. Devotion to a team – for centuries a (largely)
‘God it’s hot,’ said a Newbury waitress escaping into the lift from rain-soaked crowds jostling in the bars last Saturday. ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘It’s steaming.’ ‘Oh no,’ she replied. ‘That’s just the ladies waiting for Tom Jones,’ and the veteran Welsh warbler was indeed scheduled to be the after-racing entertainment. The race is framed to
The delights of Glorious Goodwood are on the horizon and now is a good time to have a bet on a consistent, well-handicapped horse with rock solid course and distance form and who is not ground dependent. Furthermore, he is on offer at a super-generous 33-1 with most bookmakers. REVICH is a credit to the
