Donn McClean's preview and tips ahead of day two on Irish Champions Weekend
It's the second instalment of a thrilling Irish Champions Weekend and Donn McClean looks ahead with a preview of the key action.
Irish Champions Weekend Day Two, from Leopardstown to the Curragh for a nine-race card, including a €100 contest that could trump the lot.
Never before has such an illustrious collection of riders been assembled in one place for one race. All there to help raise funds for pancreatic cancer research. All there because Pat Smullen asked them to be there.
Four Group 1 races, and it’s difficult to get away from the short ones. Pinatubo in the Goffs Vincent O’Brien National Stakes. Albigna in the Moyglare Stud Stakes.
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Soffia is also favourite for the Derrinstown Stud Flying Five, but she could have been even shorter than she is. Eddie Lynam’s filly has always been a talented filly, but she has been a revelation this season. Winner of a listed race at Naas in May, she stepped forward from that next time to land the Group 3 Ballyogan Stakes at the Curragh. Then, last time, back at the Curragh, she cut loose in the Group 2 Sapphire Stakes.
Lady O’Reilly’s filly is fast, and it appears as though she is getting faster as she is getting older. In August last year, she had the stamina to finish second in a seven-furlong handicap at Cork.
But it is at the minimum trip that she excels. Her record over the bare five furlongs reads 11211. She won the opening race on the card, the six-furlong handicap, on this day last year, and it is significant that when she won the Sapphire Stakes, her trainer nominated this race as her next intended target. No Nunthorpe, no Sprint Cup, no distractions. The Flying Five and the Abbaye, he said.
This is a good race. Mabs Cross was a little below par in the Nunthorpe Stakes last time, but she is a Group 1 filly, a Prix de l’Abbaye winner and unlucky not to win last year’s Nunthorpe. Houtzen ran Battaash to three parts of a length in the King George Stakes at Goodwood last time, and Soldier’s Call finished second to him in the Nunthorpe, while Fairyland’s July Cup run, when she did best of those who raced on the near side, would take her into the mix.
That said, Soffia is rock solid. This has been her primary target for two months now, and we know that Eddie Lynam knows how to train a top class sprinter. He trained Sole Power to win this race back in 2015 when it was a Group 2 race, and you can be sure that Soffia will be at concert pitch today.
It is going to be difficult for Search For A Song in the Comer Group International Irish St Leger, a three-year-old filly taking on high-class older stayers, but there is a chance that she will be up to the task.
Unraced as a juvenile, the Dermot Weld-trained filly was impressive in winning her maiden over 10 furlongs on her racecourse debut at Fairyhouse in May, and she stepped forward from that next time when she finished second to Trethias in the Listed Oaks Trial at Naas.
Her trainer then allowed her take her chance in the Irish Oaks. It was a massive step up in grade, into a Group 1 contest, into a Classic, but she proved that she belonged in that grade. She was keener than ideal through the race behind the sedate pace that Frankie Dettori set on Star Catcher, yet, despite expending energy through the race, she kept on well to take fourth place.
Then she went to York last time and won the Listed Galtres Stakes.
She stayed on well that day to win nicely, leaving the impression that she could improve for a step up in trip. She could take a significant step forward now anyway, that was just her fourth run ever and she goes into today’s race on an upward trajectory.
The Moyglare Stud filly has plenty to find on ratings, but she has the potential to go a fair way higher than her current rating of 105, and she receives the age allowance and sex allowance today.
No three-year-old won the Irish St Leger between Vinnie Roe’s first in 2001 and Order Of St George in 2015, but not many have tried in the last decade, and two of the three three-year-olds in last year’s race, Flag Of Honour and Latrobe, filled the first two places.
Cross Counter and Kew Gardens set a high standard, but Search For A Song is bred for the top level, a daughter of Galileo and a three-parts sister to Free Eagle. Dermot Weld has trained the winner of the Irish St Leger seven times, and Search For A Song could out-run her odds today by a fair way.
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