8-1 WINNER IS NO SECRET TO SHAMROCK: One of his Outsider bets, Never A Secret (WON 8-1), saved the day for Shamrock at Kilbeggan yesterday. Now he tries to find the best offer for a tilt at the odds-on favourite in today’s Irish Champion Stakes at Leopardstown.
What a shower! The odd splash of rain – not the heavy dose forecast earlier in the week – will do no harm to the hot favourite’s Champion Stakes chance today, and he’s likely to make a whole bunch of top-class horses look like a shower.
From midday, and on into next week, it’s sunshine all the way at Leopardstown, according to the met men, and that is likely to mean beaming faces – even for Aidan O’Brien? – from the Ballydoyle team responsible for So You Think.
3.40 Leopardstown : This is usually a Ballydoyle benefit – five wins in eight seasons – and I commented at the time that Ahimsa was only there for the casual education when his rider was allowed to put up overweight last time.
So Ahimsa remains the threat to the well-touted and very well bred Oh So Lucy, daughter of a Moyglare winner and expected to progress from her debt.
5.40 Leopardstown (Group 1): At 9-1, 5-1, 5-1 and 100-30, Misty For Me has always been comparatively easy to back, and is odds against this morning, despite delivering two Group-1s, including our 1,000 Guineas, in that sequence of prices.
To hear Emulous called a long-term prospect at age four is a rare one but she is so lightly raced and so progressive, she could barge in to the Ballydoyle party and stop their achieving a one-two.
6.45 Leopardstown (Irish Champion Stakes): Snow Fairy has around a stone to find to trouble So You Think on Goodwood form and the so-consistent Famous Name (see my ABC guide earlier in the week) has never made it beyond Group 3.
Ballydoyle also has the upper hand over the three-year-old contenders with Recital and Roderic O’Connor rated 5lb and 7lb clear of Dunboyne Express.
Roderic O’Connor, our Guineas winner, has been found out over today’s trip already, but Recital is a 1m 2f winner twice on good and on heavy and only has to be forgiven his Epsom Derby flop on the back of the hype and the ballyhoo to give him another chance here.
I shall be doubling and trebling the tiny return possible from So You Think but cannot resist a stunning 17.5 Recital in a field of six in which his stable mate, Roderic O’Connor, is clearly unfancied, out to 28.0, not far in front of Famous Name, which puts Recital third in the market.
SHAMROCK’S BETS
NAP: Misty For Me (5.40 Leopardstown)
DUTCH: Ahimsa and Oh So Lucy (3.40 Leopardstown)
OUTSIDERS: Recital (6.45 Leopardstown)
DAQ TRIO: Misty For Me (5.40 Leopardstown), So You Think (6.45 Leopardstown) Mohedian Lady (7.20 Leopardstown)
