It is very easy to gloss over the Sky Bet Sunday Series card at York with three 20-plus runner fields for races under a mile, an apprentice handicap with 20 runners and a big field for the stayers’ handicap to boot. Which rocket scientist at race planning decided to put this fixture on kicking off half an hour before the final day of the Premier League?
Fortunately there is quality action across the Irish Sea at The Curragh.
In the Irish 1000 Guineas, logic decrees that the form pick comes from the equivalent HQ Classic, so Newmarket third Tuesday, a sister to dual Classic winner Minding fits the bill. There is just a little bit of a problem with that theory. The inexperienced Tuesday was only staying on at the end, looking like she was crying out for a step up in trip. The winner was beaten in a blanket finish in the Pouliches last week looking for a classic double in what did not look a top quality renewal.
There are just two British raiders. Purplepay from the William Haggas barn, bought over the winter from her original French connections. She raced around the provincial tracks mainly on soft ground before winning a valuable conditions race at Longchamp and finishing third in the Criterium de Saint Cloud, the winner of which was third in the Greenham. James Ferguson’s Mise En Scene won the Prestige Stakes as a juvenile, never troubled the judge on either subsequent start but was only just behind Newmarket winner Cachet in the Fillies’ Mile.
Many of the others contested trial races in Ireland but at least that gives some form lines to work on, if it can be taken at face value and some of them were not just there for a warm up or to see if they were good enough.
The second of the Ballydoyle quartet, History, won a Leopardstown Group 3 on her seasonal bow beating Agartha with Panama Red (fifth), Lady Of Inishfree (sixth) and stablemate Lullaby (eighth) behind.
The other Aidan O’Brien contender Concert Hall has had quite a bit of racing, winning a Group 3 last term but finishing behind Mise En Scene in the Fillies’ Mile. She won a Navan Listed race over ten furlongs first time up but this is surely her Oaks trial given her pedigree (dam is 2012 Oaks winner Was); however, she would not be the first classic winner from this yard with miles on the clock.
The key trial for today appears to have been the Leopardstown 1000 Guineas Trial, where Agartha tried to make all. Jessica Harrington’s Villanova Queen was third that day and Panama Red was sixth but the winner, Dermot Weld’s HOMELESS SONGS was held up, showed a good turn of foot to pick up Agartha and won well, so I am going with her to give Frankel another classic.
