Lethal Levi does it his way in Ayr's big race on a weekend taken over by nicely timed swansongs

There's nothing like a couple of retirements to give you that end-of-term feeling. Franny Norton bowed out at Chester, Not So Sleepy had his final race at Newbury and the weather in parts of Britain made it feel like the end of days – though in fact, it's not even the end of the Flat season.

The November Handicap is still seven weeks away, so there's plenty of drama to come, but perhaps it won't involve many horses who need a fast surface. One clerk of the course described Saturday's rain as "biblical", though, perhaps counterintuitively, it missed the west coast of Scotland, with Saturday's Ayr fixture taking place on ground described as good to firm.

It had seemed as though Karl Burke's season was winding down. He'd had at least a dozen winners every month from April, but what goes up must come down and his September has been less fruitful. That was until Saturday, when his three runners in the Ayr Gold Cup came home in the first three places, with 22 others scrapping over the £10,872 for fourth.