It was a rare day as layers left Stratford smiling with not a single favourite scoring amidst a sequence of small fields that left backers scratching their heads in search of a winner.

Once again, champion Dan Skelton dominated proceedings with a winner, a head second and a third from 3 runners. The Championship leader has laid out his stall to beat Martin Pipe's record of winners trained in a season, and is already in a different county to his peer group, having earned £400,000 before the end of June from 50 winners, a remarkable 41% strike rate.

Riding honours however sat with Sam Twiston-Davies, who scored a double for father-son partnership Nigel & Willy with Bagheera Ginge and for Anthony Honeyball with Gore Point.

Bagheera Ginge is rapidly becoming a Stratford specialist, having won his maiden over the smaller obstacles here in 2022. This was a third victory at Luddington Road, following a comfortable 7l beating of Grillon de Monty here six weeks ago. Indeed, his only other chase win has been at Warwick, and he has yet to win outside the county.

Capitalizing on the small field for the 2m6f handicap chase, Sam T-D sent him out in front, he was briefly challenged by Nickelforce and She Is For Me Boys before shaking them off for a 9 1/2l success.

Anthony Honeyball wouldn't be among most people's list for a summer jumps candidate, and he has the luckless Ben Jones to thank for a fortuitous success in the Sun Racing Home of Racing novices Handicap chase, over a 3f shorter distance than the previous handicap. Jones, riding the Emma Lavelle-trained A Little Something, pecked at the last with the race in the bag, tipping jones out of the side door, for Twiston-Davies to pick up the pieces with Gore Point. Ouch.

Punters have latched on to Skelton-trained horses life a lifeline this past two months with good reason, and a majority of his runners have been sent off at short odds. In the Visit Racingtv Handicap Hurdle over the minimum trip, they sent off the Skelton runner at a generous 11/4 in favour of Juan Bermudez, a winner here a month ago, and the mount of Lily Pinchin.

Whilst there was only 1 1/2l between the first three at the line, top weight definitely anchored the favourite, and Skelton Jnr, with the advantage of the inner on Playful Fox made the best of his way home. The second, Reteti, was a shade unlucky, having been struck in the face at the last by Skelton's stick, and going down by just a half length; surely worth following next time off a similar weight.

Team Skelton had to play second fiddle to arch rivals the Bowens in the 2m 6f novices handicap hurdle. Sean Bowen had Slack Alice up at the head of affairs throughout, and was challenged by Harry Skelton on odds-on favourite Back To Cali at the last, but held on by a head. The second has some tidying up to do in the jumping department.

Ben Haslam is another trainer not best known for summer Jumps runners, but he'd made the longest journey down from Middleham so Wicksey's reeling in of the Skelton-trained High Aura in the juvenile hurdle wasn't the greatest surprise. Rider Richie McLernon is another whose rides are sparing during the summer and this was a fifth success since the counters went back to zero.

This racing TV sponsored card concluded with a mares handicap hurdle, which saw Theo Gillard and Donald McCain team up successfully with 22/1 outsider Roarin' Success, a neck ahead of the similarly priced Northern Rose. The stewards noted the stable's use of a tongue strap as they questioned the improvement in form, but there was no obvious plunge to watch here; it looked another case of a quirky result in a poor quality race, albeit 14 runners is a welcome novelty in this dry spell.

And we get to do it all over again tomorrow evening, the first at 1818!