Good Morning Alex is on a Hamilton Park 'hat-trick' in the £24,000 feature race at the South Lanarkshire venue on Tuesday evening. Trained by Thirsk-based father-and-daughter combination David and Nicola Barron, he is one of eleven runners declared for the McEwan Grant Construction Scottish Trophy Handicap over 1m 1f. He hasn't been seen in action since a convincing all-the-way victory over course and distance in early June having scored in even more emphatic fashion at Hamilton Park's opening fixture of 2024 on May 5. And the progressive three-year-old is actually on a four-timer as his winning sequence started in equally impressive style seven-days earlier at Wetherby. For good measure he struck twice on Newcastle's Tapeta surface in January and February after his breakthrough success at Southwell in late December. Those wins have seen the BHA rating of Good Morning Alex rocket from a lowly 45 to a  lofty 82 and he may not have stopped improving yet. He faces several in-form rivals, notably Lunario from the Newmarket yard of Alice Haynes. The Suffolk visitor scrambled home by a head at this venue over a slightly shorter trip ten-days ago and has also been on the mark at Newmarket and Yarmouth this term. Iain Jardine and Shay Farmer team up with Moonstone Boy in the opening Hampton by Hilton Hamilton Park "Hands And Heels" Apprentice Handicap. Farmer, who hails from the same neighbourhood of Hawick as Jardine, rode the third winner of his fledging career for his boss at Ayr on Saturday night.

By Gordon Brown