Jef­frey Ross

Con­trib­u­tor to an im­me­di­ate cause of Gra­ham Lee should sur­face in the Maid­en Stakes over an ex­tend­ed mile of Wolver­hamp­ton poly­track to­day, de­spite an ab­sence of 126 days.

In fact New­mar­ket train­er Ed Dun­lop has been a reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor dur­ing this re­mark­able year for 37-year-old Lee, hell bent on reach­ing 100 win­ners which would rep­re­sent a tremen­dous feat giv­en some of the 'rab­bits' he's rid­den, con­stant­ly.

Slow­ly but sure­ly the rac­ing world took note of his se­ri­ous­ness in pur­suit of a new ca­reer as a flat-race jock­ey, hav­ing de­cid­ed the 'body-mass' was too low for jump­ing; now Gra­ham is be­ing talked about as a chal­lenger for the 2013 jock­eys' cham­pi­onship!

One jock­ey re­moved from many 'ante-post' lists is Frankie Det­tori who, un­for­tu­nate­ly, faces a six months ban if, as ex­pect­ed, he fails to con­vince France Ga­lop about the rea­son(s) why he test­ed pos­i­tive dur­ing a meet­ing at Longchamp back in Sep­tem­ber.

What­ev­er there achieve­ments sport­ing per­son­al­i­ties are tar­nished when blight­ing suc­cess­ful ca­reers with an ir­re­spon­si­ble act;cy­clist Lance Arm­strong is an ob­vi­ous case in point and re­cent­ly Michael Hills missed his fi­nal day of a thir­ty-year(s) ca­reer when found to be over an al­co­hol lim­it for the last meet­ing of New­mar­ket 2012.

Once-raced Con­trib­u­tor faces what should be a sim­ple task, sixth to clas­sic prospect Ghu­rair in a 'hot' New­mar­ket Ju­ly reads way su­pe­ri­or to any­thing achieved by eleven ri­vals and he's napped with con­fi­dence de­spite the fact we are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a vex­ing run with the star bet(s).

Twice-raced Yarroom will be a warm or­der for the Maid­en Stakes over sev­en fur­longs, pun­ters plunge of run­ners trained by Roger Var­i­an, but I'll chance No Rigg each-way, trained by in-form An­drew Bald­ing and mount of Jamie Spencer who was ter­rif­ic around Kemp­ton, Wednes­day.

A com­plex char­ac­ter, the for­mer cham­pi­on, but Spencer is as good as it gets nowa­days and I'm look­ing for­ward to him rid­ing a few for Charles Hills next year, in­clud­ing un­beat­en 10,000 Guineas prospect Just The Judge in his ca­pac­i­ty as 'Qatar' con­tract jock­ey.

Ear­li­er Ling­field stages an eight-race pro­gramme which in­cludes an at­tempt by Se­cret Mis­sile to make it fourth time lucky in the Maid­en Stakes over five fur­longs.

To my knowl­edge no one ever be­came wealthy back­ing hors­es trained by William Muir but Se­cret Mis­sile is above av­er­age; just the sort I'd like to own!

SE­LEC­TIONS

R5 (5) Se­cret Mis­sile

R30 (7 Not Rigg (e.w)

R32 (3) Con­trib­u­tor (nap)