Future Champions Festival: news, tips and more – horse racing live

🏇 Racing updates from Champions Day at Newmarket 🏇 Saturday’s tips | Mail Greg with your thoughts

Key events14m agoPreamble Newmarket’s open spaces. Photograph: Alan Crowhurst/Getty ImagesView image in fullscreenNewmarket’s open spaces. Photograph: Alan Crowhurst/Getty ImagesKey events14m agoPreambleHello from Newmarket, the HQ of Flat racing, on day two of the Future Champions meeting, when the Dewhurst Stakes – the British season’s most valuable and prestigious contest for two-year-olds – will take centre-stage, ably supported by a couple more juvenile events that often highlight a star of the future. Add the historic Cesarewitch Handicap and an ongoing, ever-tightening race for the trainers’ title to the mix and there is a fascinating afternoon in store.

Much of the narrative involves head-to-heads: Desert Castle versus Darkness Falls in the Dewhurst (3.00); Rock Montreal versus Sergei Diaghilev in the Autumn Stakes (2.25); and of course, Andrew Balding versus Aidan O’Brien – the trainer of Darkness Falls and Sergei Diaghilev – in the trainers’ championship. Balding boosted his lead in the race to more than £300k yesterday, but O’Brien will be aiming to put a big dent in that this afternoon, just seven days before the money-drenched Champions Day card at Ascot next weekend.

Dawn Rising – with Ryan Moore booked to ride for Joseph O’Brien – was second behind Beylerbeyi in last year’s Cesarewitch and the pair of them are currently trading as 13-2 favourites for this year’s renewal of a race that dates back to 1839.

The ITV cameras are also on the Knavesmire, where York concludes its season with a typically competitive card, and tips for the televised card are here (with a headline that may well prove to be much better than the actual picks deserve).

We’re off and running here at Newmarket at 1.15 with the Group Three Darley Stakes, and I hope you’ll be along for the ride on what is always an intriguing and informative afternoon at the track.