Former jockey and leading Irish racing pundit Fran Berry marks your card ahead of the action at Cork today.

All eyes on Cork today given the action being taken in Britain and we have some big fields and nice two-year-old contests on offer.

Ger Lyons’ STRIKE ZONE produced a very eyecatching debut performance when taking on experienced rivals at Navan a couple of weeks ago and he can land the Coolmore Stud Gleaneagles Irish EBF Maiden for colts and geldings.

The son of Mehmas made good inroads in the last 50 yards on debut, shaping like a future winner, and the first and second had ratings in the 80s so it was a cracking effort really.

Steps up from five furlongs to six furlongs will suit the selection and prices around the even-money mark of bigger are worth snapping up as market rival Charles Fort was a bit disappointing last time.

HELLORHIGHWATER is a similar sort of price for the William Hill Gold Weekend Starts 8am Friday Maiden and I thought he could be a fair bit shorter to be honest.

Gavin Cromwell’s gelding ran into a horse with a good level of form on debut at Limerick, shaping well having travelled strongly throughout.

It was a highly satisfactory start and a little over two weeks later at Killarney he emerged with plenty of credit again given the winner Iron Fist had the run of things on the front end.

Hellorhighwater ran on inside the final furlong to go down by less than a length, proving himself on soft ground in the process.

Given the promise of each of those two runs, there should be more to come and with the benefit of a two-month absence since he was last seen, he’ll be very hard to beat.

Published at 1212 BST on 10/09/25

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