Look out for Lyons raiders at Newmarket's July meeting

Newmarket: The only Irish trainer to get a look-in at Royal Ascot, apart from Aidan O'Brien, was Ger Lyons. It was the same at Chester and Epsom.

Today he is back, this time for Newmarket's July meeting, with his Chester winner City of Tribes and Elletelle, his Queen Mary winner, in the Totesport.com Handicap and Cherry Hinton Stakes respectively.

In fact, Lyons himself will not be coming and he was not at Chester, Epsom or Ascot either, leading to some suggestion that superstitious owners were beginning to forbid his attendance.

"There's even been some suggestion I'm wanted by the police in Britain," joked Lyons yesterday.

"But my brother, Shane, does a very good job and I've got some runners at Naas. It suits me to stay here. I can do eight to 10 hours work here instead of 30 seconds there. I'd be coming if I didn't have runners at home."

County Meath-based Lyons, 41, may still be better known here among the jumping fraternity in the North, where he practised his trade as a jockey between 1986 and 1991, but that is rapidly changing as he becomes a major force as trainer.

"Jockeying was all I wanted to do but it did't work out," he reflected. "But England was good to me. I'm not training for the benefit of my health, I'm doing it for winners, and better winners, and we're beginning now to get to where we want to be. It certainly beats riding sellers round Cartmel."

It was while he was here that he met his wife Lynne, whose father, David Stevenson, runs a string of British-based jumpers under the Ashleybank Investments banner.

Until this season, Lyons had not had a runner in England on the Flat. But a lack of suitable races over sprint distances at home for City of Tribes, top weight in today's valuable six-furlong handicap and a runner-up to Hoh Mike at Sandown last month, has made travelling attractive for the three-year-old.

"It is a big ask on Wednesday," he says, "but if he's top weight, we're starting off with the best horse in the race."

Elletelle, he reports, has thrived since winning the Queen Mary.

"She's not imposing, she's a typical two-year-old filly," he says, "but she's put on 14kg since Ascot. She's in the same form as she was before coming over to Ascot. My only concern would be if it rained, she wouldn't want it soft."