The former jockey has given his tips on the horses he thinks will bring success in the coming months.

Walsh’s picks include five horses trained by Willie Mullins, with several recent race winners included.

Energumene, Chacun Pour Soi, Appreciate It and Echoes in Rain, who have all picked up wins in Ireland during the 2021 season, are shortlisted by the Irish pundit as ones to watch.

Also on his list is Kilcruit, a six-year-old horse, who the list maker tips to be the “outstanding novice hurdler.”

Three other trainers are represented on the list – Henry De Bromhead, Gordon Elliott and Philip Hobbs all have horses tipped by Walsh to succeed.

Honeysuckle, a horse who won the Champions Hurdle at Cheltenham with 2021 Irish Racing Hero Rachael Blackmore, is named as one to watch.

Walsh notes that the decision to pick Honeysuckle was easy as he believes that the horse “has been high on everyone’s list.”

Blackmore and De Bromhead’s 2019 Cheltenham race winners A Plus Tard and Minella Indo also make an appearance.

The final two horses on Walsh’s radar are Gordon Elliott’s Fil Dor and Philip Hobbs’ Thyme Hill, who he puts among esteemed company.

Three-year-old Fil Dor is the latest racing horse trained by Gordon Elliott to come onto the scene and Walsh expects a big season for the latest in the production line.

Hobbs will be aiming for another win with Thyme Hill, who has achieved success with Tom O’Brien and Richard Johnson in the last three years.

The post Ruby Walsh names 10 horses to follow ahead of National Hunt Season appeared first on SportsNewsIreland.

The fund – a total of €1,817,500 – will be spread across fifty-two events over the course of a week.

Each day will have a feature race with a minimum prize fund of €100,000 per race.

The hotly contested Tote Galway Plate, a race synonymous with Galway, will take place on Wednesday, July 28th.

The Tote Galway Plate is a race awash with quality, with experienced chasers taking on emerging youngsters, and has produced some high-class recent winners including, Balko Des Flos and Road To Riches.

This year’s edition of the race will have a prize fund of €250,000 after receiving an increase of €50,000.

The race cards on Thursday, July 29th and Friday, July 30th are sponsored in full by the Galway Races long-standing partner, Guinness, with Thursday’s Guinness Galway Hurdle now worth €250,000, having also received a boost of €50,000.

Each year for the Summer Festival, the Galway Racecourse hosts the Leading Jockey and Leading Trainer Championships sponsored by the Rooney Family and Chanelle Medical respectively.

This year, the Galway Race Committee are proud to announce that in association with the Rooney Family, they will be unveiling a new Pat Smullen Perpetual Trophy for the winner of the Flat Jockey Championship in memory of the jockey.

Smullen was linked with the Galway Festival through his partnership with Dermot Weld and a regular recipient of this prize.

Commenting on this award, Anthony Ryan, Chairman of Galway Race Committee said, “Pat was a true gentleman, a champion, a warrior and a regular to the winner’s enclosure here in Ballybrit. Pat has a huge number of fans and support here in Galway so it’s only fitting that we honour him in this way”.

Galway Racecourse have submitted plans for 5,000 spectators per day at the outdoor event, and are waiting for an imminent decision in relation to this.

Should they get approval, an announcement of their ticketing policy will be released shortly.

The first four action-packed days of the Galway Races will be broadcast on RTÉ from Ballybrit at 5 pm for two hours.

That includes the feature race on each day plus three supporting races each day.

TG4 will also broadcast the event for the first time in sixteen years, Galway Racecourse have announced.

The live coverage on TG4 will include fifteen action-packed races on Friday, July 30th and Saturday, July 31st.

It will feature races such as The Guinness Galway Blazers Steeplechase, The Guinness Galway Tribes Hurdle and The Galway Shopping Centre Handicap.

To complement the above television broadcast, Racing TV will cover and broadcast every one of the fifty-two races live from the track.

You can see the schedule for the 2021 Galway Races here.

To read the information on this year’s Ladies Day, click here.

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Pay-per-view replaces live fans

The Premier League made the move because of the ongoing absence of fans from matchdays. Under the new agreement, the current games scheduled for television won’t be affected. But, the other five games not selected for broadcast are now available on pay-per-view. Unfortunately, £14.95 is the cost per game.

For now, the Premier League has called it an “interim decision”. An official statement read that “all fixtures until the end of October will continue to be made available to fans to watch live in the UK.” However, the service will likely extend into November and December if government guidelines continue to prevent fans from attending games.

When the Premier League resumed in June, all games were made available to watch. In fact, they were even on free-to-air channels such as BBC on occasion. This agitated the League officials who were effectively giving away their product for free. In spite of this, they will not receive any of the profits from subscriptions to the pay-per-view games. Instead, the clubs split the income between them to compensate for the lack of matchday ticket sales.

The move will undoubtedly anger many fans who already have several subscriptions to TV stations just to watch their team. Even these subscribers will have to pay the new pay-per-view cost. Furthermore, there is yet to be any compensation for season ticket holders who have paid for the 2020-21 season. These fans face the prospect of not being able to attend any games and instead paying even more to watch from home.

The decision has already faced backlash. For example, Sky Sports’ own Gary Neville has spoken out against it. Neville wrote: “This is a really bad move by the Premier League to charge £14.95 for single matches that have been shown free for 6 months!”.

The Premier League has announced that all non-televised fixtures until the end of October will now be made available live on pay-per-view in the UK.

— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) October 9, 2020

Fans Growing Costs

Currently, subscribing to Sky Sports as a new customer wanting to avail of their Premier League games draws a fee of €45 for 6 months followed by €65 for another 6 months. In addition to this, Racing TV, which broadcasts all 26 Irish race tracks as well as UK meetings, costs Irish customers a further €31 a month.

On the other hand, Irish customers can purchase BT Sports at €17 per month for the first six months and €34 thereafter.

For Irish rugby fans, a subscription to Eir Sport is necessary for Pro14 fixtures. This comes at a cost of €4.99 for the first month and €29.99 thereafter.

As a result, a Leinster Rugby fan who supports Man United and watches Irish Racing would need subscriptions to Eir Sport (Pro14), Sky Sports (Premier League and Sky Sports Racing), BT Sport (Champions Cup and Premier League), and Racing UK (Irish horse racing).

If such a fan signed up today to such an extensive TV package, they would spend €1,672.88 in the next 12 months.

This is without considering subscriptions to Amazon Prime who have the rights for most of the upcoming Autumn Nations Rugby tournament. Likewise, Premier Sports for school’s rugby games and Virgin Media Sports for Champions League and Europa League games.

Of course, there are other packages available. New customers can sign up to Sky Sports Extra for access to Premier Sports, Sky Sports and BT Sport all in one place. Currently, that will cost a new customer €780 annually.

But, that does not exempt one from the new £14.95 charge imposed on the incoming pay-per-view games. In fact, Man United and Chelsea fans suffer first as their next Premier League games will be pay-per-view ties.

Either way, fans are suffering instead of benefitting from the vast amount of stations broadcasting their favourite sports.

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https://twitter.com/SkySportsPL/status/1314559927722094593

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Lady Maura (10/3f) looks a potentially smart addition to the sprinting ranks on the evidence of her facile Kilberry Handicap triumph at Navan.

Ridden by Gary Halpin, the Muhaarar filly appeared to enjoy the stiff five furlongs and rain-eased going and the issue was settled very quickly to give Murtagh his 11^th win of the campaign.

“I was worried about the ground with her” Murtagh admitted. “I’m glad we got a win into her because I was worried about the trip. We tried six, we tried seven but Niall McCullagh said she was all speed and Gary rode her work the other day and was happy with her.

“It probably wasn’t a great race but you couldn’t be more impressed with what she did today.

“We’ll see what the handicapper does. You’d love to go another three-year-old sprint to get her to learn how to sprint before she goes in against the older ones.

“Big thanks to (owners) Mark and Aisling Gittins, who sent her to me. She’d a good winter. She came back in good shape and I’m delighted they’re getting a few winners on the board now because they’ve had huge investment in racing in recent years.

“Last year we’d a great year but we’d loads of seconds. This year, all them seconds are winning. The lads are working hard at home, the horses were in great form. The races just seem to be there for them.”

It was a good day for trainers more noted for their National Hunt prowess, as Noel Meade, Gordon Elliott and Tony Mullins all scored.

Illetas (5/4f) was very gutsy and showed a likeable attitude in responding to Luke McAteer’s urgings, despite being one of the first under pressure, to prevail in the Irish Stallion Farms EBF Maiden for three-year-olds for Mullins, having been second at the track 13 days before.

It was a second Flat success in as many days for Elliott, when Chris Hayes delivered Lalipour (25/1) from out with the washing to deny the unfortunate Aasleagh Fawn in the dying strides of the Irish Stallion Farms EBF Maiden for three-year-olds and upwards.

Gary Carroll looked to have done everything right on Aasleagh Fawn but having appeared to see off allcomers resolutely, was nabbed in the shadow of the lollipop.

Noel Meade has made a noteworthy return to Flat competition in the past couple of seasons and Elysium (12/1) certainly caught the eye when overcoming a tardy break to bag the Foran Equine Irish EBF Auction Maiden for juvenile fillies.

A winner for first-crop sire Belardo, Elysium stayed on very strongly having been brought with a smooth run by Colin Keane, with Giselles Thunder a length and three quarters back in second.

Paddy Harnett capitalised on picking up a late spare from Denis Hogan by garnering the NavanRacecourse.ie Handicap, as Boughtinthedark (5/1) made light of a 16lbs hike from a course and distance victory.

Others to enjoy the journey to Navan were Laws Of Indices for Ken Condon and Billy Lee, Hy Brasil for Joseph O’Brien and Shane Crosse and Walking On Glass for the unrelated Roche duo, Padraig and Leigh.

The post Lady Maura shines for Murtagh at Navan appeared first on SportsNewsIreland.