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Jockey Club Of Turkey Meld Stakes
Leopardstown 7.20
ATR

MARS TODAY

If ever a horse deserves a Group race success this season then surely it’s Mars who goes into the Group 3 Meld Stakes at Leopardstown tonight as the red hot favourite.

He’s sure to find this a lot easier after being pitched in at the deepest of the deep end this season and running with credit including in the Derby when he finished sixth to Ruler Of The World, his stablemate.

He’s never actually won on turf. He was the Ballydoyle Derby ‘talking horse’ over the winter and made an impressive winning debut on the Polytrack at Dundalk.

Again, last time out he contested a Group 1 – the Eclipse at Sandown when fourth to Al Kazeen and ran well enough but gave the impression that a drop in class is what may be needed.

Dermot Weld has won the last three runnings of this with Famous Name and relies upon Along Came Casey this time but it really should all be about Mars tonight.

He looks a solid favourite.

STAR FORECAST
(stake between 0.5 and 10 points)
10 points win MARS to win 7.20 Leopardstown

(-10 points Tuesday)

I’m still big. It’s the pictures that got smaller

Said Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. But the British film industry is enjoying a boom period.

Cinema box office receipts rose 6% in 2012 to hit a record of £1.1bn, according to newly released figures.

According to the British Film Institute (BFI) 2013 Statistical Yearbook, cinema admissions in the UK reached 172.5 million, the third highest level in the last 40 years.

The BFI said UK films took £3.45bn at the global box office, claiming a 15% share of the international market – the third highest global box office take ever recorded.

The yearbook also revealed that filmgoers over the age of 45 became the largest proportion of the British cinema audience for the first time.

Skyfall, the latest film of the James Bond franchise, was the year’s biggest movie and it took £715m around the world.