Musselburgh is about to pull in its biggest crowd for the £140,000 totescoop6 Edinburgh Cup meeting, with advance sales up by 10% on last year.

More than 6000 people are expected to attend, and not surprisingly the £60,000 feature race has attracted the attention of the leading UK stables with a stellar selection due to head north from Newmarket.

Bill Farnsworth, the manager of Musselburgh Racecourse, harbours ambitions of getting Channel 4 on board to televise the East Lothian track's premier turf meeting which would go some way to pushing ahead with plans for a £100,000 purse for the Edinburgh Cup. "It's our biggest Flat meeting of the season and that is reflected in the quality fields entered, the best of which will be heading to Royal Ascot in the coming weeks," he said.

"We have upped prize money by £10,000 and pre-sales are very good so we are expecting a very healthy 6000-plus crowd which will generate a great atmosphere on Derby Day. The big race from Epson will be live on our screens and we hope as the Edinburgh Cup continues to grow that we can encourage Channel 4 to give us a berth in their coverage and provide fans with a superb Derby Day Scotland-England double feature."