Saturday tips: Five horses to follow from five of our experts

Tipster: Ross Millar

Best odds: 100-30

Tipster: Alex Scott

Best odds: Advised at 16-1

As ever, a fascinating race is in store, not least for how unique it is, but also due to the fact we have a real mixture of proven veterans and up-and-coming types that are still unexposed.

At the early prices, it may pay to side with STRIKE each-way at 16-1. He gets along well with his valuable claimer and went very close to landing this off a higher mark last season.

Sensorium can be forgiven his comeback effort and remains a horse of interest, whilst William Haggas's progressive three-year-old Binhareer is unlikely to be far away either.

Tipster: Martin Dixon

Best odds: 9-1

Chris Mason has his small team of horses in terrific form this season (eight winners and 14 more placed from only 40 runners in 2025) and his seven-y-o mare, Glamorous Breeze, has already had a fine season herself with a couple of wins on the board. She's my nap for Saturday.

She's run well in big fields at Ascot on her past two starts, against a draw bias last time when behind the likes of Rhythm And Hooves and King Of Stars who reoppose, and I'm hoping from stall 3 here she will be in the right place on the track this time directly behind some of the trailblazers in what should be a strongly-run race. 

Tipster: Andy Stephens with the help of RaceiQ

Best odds: 14-1 

Obelix put up a stunning performance when winning a competitive 7f handicap at York last month and looks overpriced to repeat the dose here. The Julie Camacho-trained five-year-old was still last of the 15 runners with two furlongs to run on the Knavesmire, but swept past all the opposition to eventually win going away by a length and a half.

He zoomed through the penultimate furlong in just over 11 seconds, which was far quicker than anything else in the field, and was the only horse to dip under 12 seconds in the final furlong despite meeting some trouble.

Obelix was more than a second quicker than the runner-up, Physique, through the final two furlongs and his Finishing Speed Percentage (FSP) of 103.62% underlined his power-packed finish. The next best in the field was 101.48%.

This was not a case of the runners going crazy fractions and teeing things up for one ridden more conservatively. In such instances, the majority of the runners have an FSP of 95% or lower, which was not what happened. 

The winning time was 1.37sec quicker than par and it’s worth remembering how hard it can be to pounce from off the pace at the flat and speed-favouring York, especially on quick ground. Indeed, four winners on the same card made all the running.

He failed to reproduce that running  at Wolverhampton last time, but  it was something of a non-event for him.

Tipster: Dave Nevison

Best odds: 9-4

Mark Walford’s mare is another who goes very well at Ripon and won this corresponding race last season off the same mark. 

She came back to form with a win last time at Doncaster and has only been raised 2lb. 

Mark Walford has his string in good form and given this mare backed up a win very sharply when landing this event 12 months ago, I expect her to again go very close. She gets on well with the excellent Jason Hart, who chalked up his 1,000th winner this week.