Eustace's Ascot heroes hunting more glory at Goodwood
Docklands now heads for the Sussex Stakes on the South Downs next week, where he will face an incredibly strong field that includes dual Group One-winner Field Of Gold.
'Docklands has been super since the race and seems to have come out of it very well. He has done a couple of bits of work since,' said Eustace.
'He obviously came out of it race-fit, so it's getting him into Goodwood in as good a form as we got him into Ascot.
'We are under no illusions regarding the opposition. We take on the three-year-olds, particularly Field of Gold, which will be the toughest opponent he's faced so far, but he's in as good a place as we have ever had him.'
Docklands has been ridden by various jockeys in the past and was something of a chance ride for Mark Zahra at Royal Ascot, with Tom Marquand now set to get the leg up as those former partners are unavailable.
Eustace confirmed: 'Tom Marquand will ride in the Sussex. Mark rode him at Ascot and Richard (Kingscote, who rode on his first two starts this year) is off to Hong Kong.
'Finding someone who can commit over two or three races this year is difficult for a yard our size, but I'm obviously keen to get the best available. I have a good relationship with Tom through my time with William Haggas and I think he'll suit him well.'
Time For Sandals is taking aim at the King George Qatar Stakes at Goodwood, a step back to five furlongs for the first time since her juvenile season.
Prior to Ascot the filly was second by just a head in the Prix Texanita at Chantilly, a performance that has developed into a good line of form as the winner, Woodshauna, landed the Group One Prix Jean Prat next time out.
Eustace said of his runner: 'She's come out of Ascot particularly well. It was a big effort and the extra few weeks have really helped her.
'The Chantilly form has worked out very well and the winner of that has won the Prix Jean Prat, so her form is beginning to stack up stronger than people maybe thought it did on the day.
'Goodwood, almost more so than Ascot, can be quite a tough place to travel horses because of the box journey up to the racetrack. Mentally, it asks more questions than Ascot, but both she and Docklands mentally are very strong so that part of it I have no concerns about, so it's a real asset for them.'
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The Guardian
7 hours ago
- The Guardian
Are you not wowed? Bazball, India and a one-armed man deliver drama and beauty
Well, that was something new. Have you ever seen the one‑armed man running a bye to the keeper while 20,000 people leap and writhe and hold their heads and the one-armed man shouts in agony? Have you ever seen figures picked out in silhouette at the top of the stand, posed in perfect shapes of triumph, dread and fear because another gobbet of time has passed, another dot, because essentially nothing has happened? Have you ever seen the one‑armed man walk down and prod the middle of the wicket between balls, like this is just another cricket day, and had to swallow a snort of disbelief at the extreme cinematic weirdness of this snapshot in time? At times such as these, immersed in the super-heated bubble at the final day at the Oval, all of this stuff undeniably happening but also basically nothing, a story told only to itself, you do wonder how you'd explain it to someone from Denmark. Words such as nuance, post-colonial, will, protocol gabbled out while the person from Denmark nods politely. Wait. Geopolitics! Hunger! Umpire's call! And all of this expressed through 25 days of the most stiffly choreographed sporting activity ever devised. This is a game that takes place in trousers. It's a dance around a semi‑invisible dark red ball. Two hours after the final notes at the Oval all that was left on one of the upper staircases in the stand at the Vauxhall End was a single abandoned black leather slip‑on shoe with an empty carton of snus balanced on top of it, and you thought, yeah, that seems about right. At the end of which India did definitely win here by six runs. On a grey and smudged south London morning, the Oval felt like a mini-Glastonbury before play. All the notes were here, the hum, the crackle, the shouts, the Indian section in the stands rising to wave at Dinesh Karthik as he marched across this sallow old lime green oval like a presidential candidate. This is a very distinct stage for urban sporting theatre. Crawl past on a 36 bus and you get to peer in over that high wall into an empty secret garden, peopled for six months of the year by a man with a broom, but tended and cherished for moments such as this when it feels like nowhere else in the world could possibly exist; and where suddenly something comes up out of the soil, echoes of other days, stored up energy, ghosts at the edge of the action. The first of those, that first Ashes Test in 1881, was so tense it is said one spectator died of a heart attack, while another chewed through an umbrella handle as Fred 'the Demon' Spofforth worked his way through England's batsmen. What was the modern equivalent here? Breaking your refresh button? Spontaneously combusting your own vape? Cricket, which is always dying even while it throbs with vibrant life, is always doing this to us, and always questioning itself, wondering about the end times even while it's out there writing Ulysses again. Here England needed 35 to win and India three and a half wickets to level the series. The players came out to a huge rolling wave of applause, India's fielders breaking from their huddle to sprint in unison, impossibly heroic already, a group who have given us everything over the past two months. And this was a day for Mohammed 'the Demon' Siraj, who really is the most lovable maniac in sport, and who bowled like a god here to win this game. Jamie Overton hooked the first ball for four and Surrey-cut the next one and you waited for the energy to shift. Prasidh Krishna just laughed and you loved him for it. Jamie Smith still looked stuck, frozen, drained and was duly euthanised from the crease. England tried to Baz this, to play shots, because how else? But the ball was talking too, and the ball will have its say. Overton lasted one delivery from Siraj, who was bowling to his own stirring one-man montage soundtrack by now. Simple pieces of Test cricket, a leave, were greeted with huge cheers and gasps like Puccini being roared on by a heavy metal stadium. Josh Tongue came and went like filler in a western who exists only to be gunned down in the final shootout. And so it came to pass, as Chris Woakes walked down the pavilion steps for his Lord Nelson moment. Kiss me, Gus. This should not be happening. A one-armed man, sling tucked weirdly inside his woollen jumper, is trying to play elite sport. Gus Atkinson slogged a swirling six over long-on, like a man throwing the last sticks of furniture on to the fire. There was wild impromptu chatter about the tactics, the game‑state of how to rotate the one-armed man, how to farm him, all of it just noise in the dark. Siraj was always going to close this out. Atkinson's off-stump was flattened and the moment seemed to stretch out. There was a breath, a beat, before the chaos of victory kicked in, figures running everywhere, an unceasing well of drama, needle, blood, skill leading to the perfect symmetry of a 2-2 draw. And all the while underneath the static and the shouts something else seemed to settle, the sound of quiet applause. Never mind the score, or the arguments over moments, luck, injury, whatever. It is simply time for hats off here. Plaudits to India for a wonderful effort. And from a home point of view, for Ben Stokes and the Bazball project. Sign up to The Spin Subscribe to our cricket newsletter for our writers' thoughts on the biggest stories and a review of the week's action after newsletter promotion For all the bullshit, the moments of head-scratch, the infuriating asides, these lunatics are producing something entirely new. 'Are You Not Entertained?' doesn't really do it justice. Are you not wrung out, frazzled, wowed? It has been the most glorious experiment, moments of beauty, fun and impossible drama set always to its own insistent set of rhythms. And who knows, we may not see this again. This may be the thing, right here. Who knows if Stokes will play another Test in England? The plan is to keep rolling on, but Australia tends to be a bookend and England's captain has been playing at this level for 14 years. Woakes may be done. Joe Root, surely not. Mark Wood, not sure. Jofra Archer, not sure. But what a show they have given us. What are they going to say about Bazball? Who's going to tell them? What sense will this make when cricket has become the Ryder Cup or some colours on a screen with a shouting man from Love Island? Even the ceremonials at the end were part of the theatre, like the final act of a Shakespeare comedy when all returns to laughter, bonds are formed, hands shaken, misunderstandings corrected. Stokes was pale and terse, deep in the Oval indoor school, but he talked first about the spectacle and the brilliance of the series. England do like to chat about being the saviours of Tests. There is self-interest in this. It's a very well‑paid job. But it is also love, devotion and faith. 'As a massive advocate of this format … this has certainly been one of those series that can keep that narrative around Test cricket is dying … so … well,' Stokes shrugged, while also sniffing at the idea that Harry Brook had let his team down by scoring the wrong kind of 111. Stokes made a good point about the selflessness of the remaining England seamers, putting their bodies on the line to fill the breach left by Woakes. He talked about Siraj with genuine admiration, which will, you feel, mean a lot to the man himself. He said he would now be 'knocking about' the Hundred, which is a bit like Odin announcing at the end of the Asgard‑Jotunheim War that he fancies a game of Bop-It now. And so we must talk about the past and future, both of which do still have to exist outside the moment. Bazball can be maddening, cult-like, just another clique. England have talked mind‑bending rubbish at times. There have been shoulders picks, good-around-the-group picks. Any divvying up of this result should dwell on the selection of two players who just haven't had any cricket, most obviously Jacob Bethell, who was shunted into the light and produced a tortured innings, a man out there batting with a stale baguette. The Baz-era has been maddening to every person from every other country who has ever heard a self-assured Englishman explaining the world to them while simultaneously conveying that, yeah, you're doing really well, but we do still own this. The super cool optics, the iconography of lounging exceptionalism. It has been very funny at times. But this thing has also produced utterly thrilling cricket, sport that is simply unlike the stuff that went before. It has been postmodernism at times, taking these structures and relics and trying to do something new. What is batting? What is a game for? What is a nightwatchman? Test cricket is always an interplay of rules, shapes, tradition and the slightly tortured individuals at its centre. This has been pure personality, those old rules and protocols bent into a framework for self‑expression. It also gave us this final day, because England kept playing the same way to the end rather than falling into respectable defeat, a strange blend of colour, will, drama, art, maths, salt, sweet, sour, bitter, umami; and a reminder that this sport will always leave you both stuffed to the gills and deliciously unsatisfied. At close of play it no longer felt like a chilly November morning. It felt like February. It isn't overly dramatic to say this might yet be the high point of all this. We will now need to talk about team building and the future. England do look well set for the Ashes, if the bowling can settle down and bodies heal. For now it is probably best just to be glad we got to see it.
The Guardian
9 hours ago
- The Guardian
Are you not wowed? Bazball, India and a one-armed man deliver drama and beauty
Well, that was something new. Have you ever seen the one-armed man running a bye to the keeper while 20,000 people leap and writhe and hold their heads and the one-armed man shouts in agony? Have you ever seen figures picked out in silhouette at the top of the stand, posed in perfect shapes of triumph, dread and fear because another gobbet of time has passed, another dot, because essentially nothing has happened? Have you ever seen the one-armed man walk down and prod the middle of the wicket between balls, like this is just another cricket day, and had to swallow a snort of disbelief at the extreme cinematic weirdness of this snapshot in time? At times such as these, immersed in the super-heated bubble at the final day at the Oval, all of this stuff undeniably happening but also basically nothing, a story told only to itself, you do wonder how you'd explain it to someone from Denmark. Words such as nuance, post-colonial, will, protocol gabbled out while the person from Denmark nods politely. Wait. Geopolitics! Hunger! Umpire's call! And all of this expressed through 25 days of the most stiffly choreographed sporting activity ever devised. This is a game that takes place in trousers. It's a dance around a semi-invisible dark red ball. Two hours after the final notes at the Oval all that was left on one of the upper staircases in the stand at the Vauxhall End was a single abandoned black leather slip-on shoe with an empty carton of snus balanced on top of it, and you thought, yeah, that seems about right. At the end of which India did definitely win here by six runs. On a grey and smudged south London morning, the Oval felt like a mini-Glastonbury before play. All the notes were here, the hum, the crackle, the shouts, the Indian section in the stands rising to wave at Dinesh Kartik as he marched across this sallow old lime green oval like a presidential candidate. This is a very distinct stage for urban sporting theatre. Crawl past on a 36 bus and you get to peer in over that high wall into an empty secret garden, peopled for six months of the year by a man with a broom, but tended and cherished for moments like this when it feels like nowhere else in the world could possibly exist; and where suddenly something comes up out of the soil, echoes of other days, stored up energy, ghosts at the edge of the action. The first of those, that first Ashes Test in 1881, was so tense it is said one spectator died of a heart attack, while another chewed through an umbrella handle as Fred 'the Demon' Spofforth worked his way through England's batsmen. What was the modern equivalent here? Breaking your refresh button? Spontaneously combusting your own vape? Cricket, which is always dying even while it throbs with vibrant life, is always doing this to us, and always questioning itself, wondering about the end times even while it's out there writing Ulysses again. Here England needed 35 to win and India three and a half wickets to level the series. The players came out to a huge rolling wave of applause, India's fielders breaking from their huddle to sprint in unison, impossibly heroic already, a group who have given us everything over the last two months. And this was a day for Mohammed 'the Demon' Siraj, who really is the most lovable maniac in sport, and who bowled like a god here to win this game. Jamie Overton hooked the first ball for four and Surrey-cut the next one and you waited for the energy to shift. Prasidh Krishna just laughed and you loved him for it. Jamie Smith still looked stuck, frozen, drained and was duly euthanised from the crease. England tried to Baz this, to play shots, because how else? But the ball was talking too, and the ball will have its say. Overton lasted one delivery from Siraj, who was bowling to his own stirring one-man montage soundtrack by now. Simple pieces of Test cricket, a leave, were greeted with huge cheers and gasps like Puccini being roared on by a heavy metal stadium. Josh Tongue came and went like filler in a western who exists only to be gunned down in the final shootout. And so it came to pass, as Chris Woakes walked down the pavilion steps for his Lord Nelson moment. Kiss me, Gus. This should not be happening. A one-armed man, sling tucked weirdly inside his woollen jumper, is trying to play elite sport. Gus Atkinson slogged a swirling six over long-on, like a man throwing the last sticks of furniture on to the fire. There was wild impromptu chatter about the tactics, the game-state of how to rotate the one-armed man, how to farm him, all of it just noise in the dark. Siraj was always going to close this out. Atkinson's off-stump was flattened and the moment seemed to stretch out. There was a breath, a beat, before the chaos of victory kicked in, figures running everywhere, an unceasing well of drama, needle, blood, skill leading to the perfect symmetry of a 2-2 draw. And all the while underneath the static and the shouts something else seemed to settle, the sound of quiet applause. Never mind the score, or the arguments over moments, luck, injury, whatever. It is simply time for hats off here. Plaudits to India for a wonderful effort. And from a home point of view, for Ben Stokes and the Bazball project. Sign up to The Spin Subscribe to our cricket newsletter for our writers' thoughts on the biggest stories and a review of the week's action after newsletter promotion For all the bullshit, the moments of head-scratch, the infuriating asides, these lunatics are producing something entirely new. 'Are You Not Entertained?' doesn't really do it justice. Are you not wrung out, frazzled, wowed? It has been the most glorious experiment, moments of beauty, fun and impossible drama set always to its own insistent set of rhythms. And who knows, we may not see this again. This may be the thing, right here. Who knows if Stokes will play another Test in England? The plan is to keep rolling on, but Australia tends to be a bookend and England's captain has been playing at this level for 14 years. Woakes may be done. Joe Root, surely not. Mark Wood, not sure. Jofra Archer not sure. But what a show they have given us. What are they going to say about Bazball? Who's going to tell them? What sense will this make when cricket has become the Ryder Cup or some colours on a screen with a shouting man from Love Island? Even the ceremonials at the end were part of the theatre, like the final act of a Shakespeare comedy when all returns to laughter, bonds are formed, hands shaken, misunderstandings corrected. Stokes was pale and terse in the bowels of the Oval indoor school, but he talked first about the spectacle and the brilliance of the series. England do like to chat about being the saviours of Tests. There is self-interest in this. It's a very well paid job. But it is also love, devotion and faith. 'As a massive advocate of this format … this has certainly been one of those series that can keep that narrative around Test cricket is dying … so … well,' Stokes shrugged, while also sniffing at the idea Harry Brook had let his team down by scoring the wrong kind of 111. Stokes made a good point about the selflessness of the remaining England seamers, putting their bodies on the line to fill the breach left by Woakes. He talked about Siraj with genuine admiration, which will, you feel, mean a lot to the man himself. He said he would now be 'knocking about' The Hundred, which is a bit like Odin announcing at the end of the Asgard-Jotunheim War that he fancies a game of Bop-It now. And so we must talk about the past and future, both of which do still have to exist outside the moment. Bazball can be maddening, cult-like, just another clique. England have talked mind-bending rubbish at times. There have been shoulders picks, good-around-the-group picks. Any divvying up of this result should dwell on the selection of two players who just haven't had any cricket, most obviously Jacob Bethell, who was shunted into the light and produced a tortured innings, a man out there batting with a stale baguette. The Baz-era has been maddening to every person from every other country who has ever heard a self-assured Englishman explaining the world to them while simultaneously conveying that, yeah, you're doing really well, but we do still own this. The super cool optics, the iconography of lounging exceptionalism. It has been very funny at times. But this thing has also produced utterly thrilling cricket, sport that is simply unlike the stuff that went before. It has been postmodernism at times, taking these structures and relics and trying to do something new. What is batting? What is a game for? What is a nightwatchman? Test cricket is always an interplay of rules, shapes, tradition and the slightly tortured individuals at its centre. This has been pure personality, those old rules and protocols bent into a framework for self-expression. It also gave us this final day, because England kept playing the same way to the end rather than falling into respectable defeat, a strange blend of colour will, drama, art, maths, salt, sweet, sour, bitter, umami; and a reminder that this sport will always leave you both stuffed to the gills and deliciously unsatisfied. At close of play it no longer felt like a chilly November morning. It felt like February. It isn't overly dramatic to say this might yet be the high point of all this. We will now need to talk about team building and the future. England do look well set for the Ashes, if the bowling can settle down and bodies heal. For now it is probably best just to be glad we got to see it.
The Sun
a day ago
- The Sun
Lando Norris pips McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri in tense Hungarian Grand Prix as F1 title race heats up
LANDO NORRIS won the Hungarian Grand Prix by the skin of his teeth to leave him trailing Oscar Piastri by just nine points in the title race. It will go down as a pivotal moment for the championship as the plucky Brit had gambled on a one-stop strategy and it paid off against the bold and fearless Aussie, who hunted him down like a shark until the very end but had to settle for second. 6 6 6 George Russell came in third after coming out on top of a fierce battle for third with Charles Leclerc, who had a meltdown at his Ferrari team for blowing pole-position. Leclerc got away well, holding his lead at the front, while a horrible start from Lando Norris saw him slip down two-places into fifth. Mercedes' George Russell nipped up to third with Fernando Alonso close behind him in fourth. Meanwhile, it was not a good start for Lewis Hamilton as he was overtaken by Carlos Sainz and Kimi Antonelli on the opening lap, leaving him in 14th and a lot of ground to make up. By lap three Norris got by Alonso's Aston Martin for fourth while Leclerc was building a lead ahead of Piastri out front. Norris was soon snapping at the heels of Russell in the battle for third, but just couldn't get past the Mercedes driver until he pitted on lap 20. Finally things got spicy when Max Verstappen went for an audacious move on his old rival Lewis Hamilton but the Ferrari driver ran wide. The pair nearly made contact but the Dutchman got ahead and snatched 11th place from the Brit. BEST ONLINE CASINOS - TOP SITES IN THE UK The stewards made note of the incident and Verstappen was under investigation. Lando Norris sprayed the gravel with two wheels before he was urged to 'keep the focus' by his race engineer Will Joseph. Piastri was over eight seconds ahead of his teammate by lap 45 with Norris closing in and setting a new fastest lap time to eat into the gap between them. The Aussie was dwindling and pitted before remerging and hunting down Leclerc until he left him for dust on lap 51. Norris was the only driver ahead of him now, rolling the dice with the one-stop strategy until the end. Leclerc was left livid at his team for letting first-place fall from their clutches and fumed on the radio: "This is so incredibly frustrating. We have lost all competitiveness, you just have to listen to me. "I would have found a different way of managing those issues. "Now it's just undriveable. It's a miracle if we finish on the podium." Piastri hunted Norris on his fresh tyres with just over three-seconds separating them with 10-laps to go. Russell was left seething as Leclerc twice moved over to the right as Russell tried to dive down the inside to overtake with the two nearly making contact. Russell was fuming on the radio demanding a penalty for the Monegasque driver and the stewards investigated. Fans were licking their lips at the battle between Norris and Piastri at the front, as the two McLarens lapped 12th place Hamilton who finished where he started. 6 6 6
