WITH the Yorkshire Ebor Festival getting under way as this column was being written, the opening day will be tackled here and the remainder in next week’s column.

Those mourning the death of ‘proper, fast, summer ground’ in these days of knee-jerk watering discovered that there was some life in the corpse yet. Times on Wednesday at York were fast, despite a small amount of artificial irrigation, and arguably nudging ‘firm’ on the straight course.