Woods looks to Montara

RACING: In improving an Irish 2,000 Guineas third placing into an Irish Derby win on his next Curragh start Grey Swallow was emulating his maternal grand sire The Minstrel.

He had become the first of the Vincent O'Brien/Robert Sangster Derby winners when he got a Lester Piggott "special" to win at Epsom and the partnership survived an objection to complete the Derby Double.

Curiously, the issue of The Minstrel's ability to stay 1½ miles was as hotly debated as was that of his grey grandson and both of them gave the critics the heave-ho.

The decision to miss out on the English Derby by Dermot Weld was wise for who can say with certainty that he would have survived unharmed the downhill dash to Tattenham Corner?

Meanwhile, on Sunday he got a split-second ride from Pat Smullen with which not even Lester Piggott could have found fault.

However, Walter Haefner, a supporter of Irish racing and breeding and mainstay of the Weld stable, must wonder what sort of hoodoo hangs over his ambition of winning one of the major European Derbys.

At the start of 1980s Moyglare was a breeding-to-sell operation sending its yearlings to Deauville and Paris but after he had let slip two successive French Derby winners, Bikala and Assert, for small money he decided on a change of policy and thereafter has raced his own stock.

In the process of the annual weeding out of mares to keep numbers under control, he let go Style of Life and she was bought by Marguerite Weld who not only went on to become the breeder of Grey Swallow but is part owner to this day.

Could you possibly buy the winner of an Irish handicap for €600? At Sligo this evening the Strabane trainer Lindsay Woods is looking for a positive answer to that question from Montara having bought him out of Con Collins' yards in 2002 for that outlay.

He only got to the track once last year but he has been in the money twice this season already and and most recently at Down Royal was second to Gortnacurra.

Form at The Maze particularly in The Ulster Derby and Oaks races stood up at The Curragh this weekend.

Tim Doyle has been waiting for the ground to change for The Moyne Machine who ran so well on a yielding surface at Thurles behind Arbelina while the Donie Hassett trained Best All Stars is an interesting newcomer in the bumper as his rider, the champion amateur Derek O'Connor, was on the form horse Western Flyer when he was fourth at Fairyhouse.