POWER AND GLORY AT THE CURRAGH: Shamrock believes there’s a hot double on the cards in two big races at the Curragh on Irish St Leger day but has big-odds Betdaq value in his Outsider bets.
2.40 Curragh (Blenheim Stakes): Take Aidan O’Brien (four wins) and David Wachman (two) out of this equation, and the stats have no winning trainer to offer you with runners in today’s race.
With one exception, winners have had two or three races only, and exposed animals with seven or eight runs, simply don’t win it, except in a bad year.
Yet Jim Bolger fields the favourite, An Ghalanta, and An Ghalanta has had eight races already; Experience has had six. So I could only risk my money on the Ballydoyle improver Crusade.
But hold your horses! There’s one colt with no experience at all which, with all that form around him, should mean he’s a 20-1 shot. Not so.
Born To Sea is a half-brother to Sea The Stars and Galileo. He’s trained, as was Sea The Stars by the same John Oxx, and his schedule is the same: next stop the Beresford on the 25th, which of course Sea The Stars won.
It won’t have escaped your attention that Oxx is in such form that he took two to Doncaster this week and lifted two Group races, the Sceptre Stakes (Alanza) and the Doncaster Cup with Saddler’s Rock, beaten on his previous run by my Irish St Leger bet today.
3.15 Curragh (National Stakes): Having lost the Railway Stakes to an English raider, Ballydoyle – with three runners – is again the home mainstay to hold out against a Jeremy Noseda attack with Talwar.
Talwar won the Solario at Sandown on soft ground by five lengths but it was a small field and the time was slow. Nothing in the race can prove the quality of the form, and the same applies to the strength of Dragon Pulse’s Futurity at the Curragh. Runner-up Parish Hall had been well beaten in the Phoenix Stakes.
No it’s down to Ballydoyle again to repel borders, through Power, the narrow Phoenix runner-up. Three other O’Brien runners will have the ‘I told you so’ brigade punting one of his at bigger odds but I believe Power is as power does.
3.50 Curragh (Irish St Leger): We also lost this to the English last year and, for the third time today, it’s down to Ballydoyle to stop them with the Ascot Gold Cup winner Fame And Glory.
He won the Saval Beg over today’s trip and last year’s Coronation Cup at Epsom over 1m 4f. More than 14 lengths behind him that day was his nearest adversary in today’s Leger market, Jukebox Jury.
And, since Duncan was nearly 11 lengths behind him in this year’s Gold Cup, I rest my case. And I rest my punts and euros, the whole nest-egg, on going for Glory.
4.25 Curragh (Curragh Amateur Derby): What a difference a jockey can make. Or I think he will. Derek O’Connor, our most professional non-professional can make all the difference to Bombadero, in the frame eight times in a row without winning. Katie Walsh on Minsk would be my second choice.
SHAMROCK’S BETS
NAP: Power (3.15 Curragh)
NEXT BEST: Fame And Glory (3.50 Curragh)
OUTSIDER: Nocturnal Affair (2.35 Doncaster), Born To Sea (2.40 Curragh), Seville (3.10 Doncaster), Bombadero (4.20 Curragh)
DAQ TRIO: Nocturnal Affair (2.35 Doncaster), Power (3.15 Curragh), Fame And Glory (3.50 Curragh)
