An Irish Derby win is the one glaring omission from champion jockey Michael Kinane's record, but he warmed up for another tilt at his bogey race with a double at Gowran Park yesterday.
Kinane is set to pick from the Aidan O'Brien-trained trio in Sunday's big race, and it was the Ballydoyle trainer who provided him with his first yesterday, the odds-on Turnberry Isle.
It wasn't an easy success, as it was only in the last 50 yards that Turnberry Isle got the better of the market danger, Marsh Harrier, who looked the likely winner all the way up the straight.
"He's definitely going the right way, as he was very backward two months ago. We'll try and find a Listed race for him and he could be good," said the Coolmore spokesman Paul Shanahan.
Kinane hit the 38 winner mark for this term aboard another favourite, Bamford Castle, in the McEnery Handicap, and Paddy Mullins's versatile horse was a more comfortable length and a half winner from Keeping The Faith.
Melbourne's champion rider Damien Oliver will be eagerly awaiting whatever Kinane discards from the O'Brien Derby team, but in the meantime he notched his fifth winner in Ireland aboard Indian Desert in the seven-furlong maiden.
"He seems good, doesn't he," said the winner's trainer Tony Mullins, who hopes Oliver will be able to do the weight when Indian Desert takes his chance in a £40,000 handicap next weekend.
Cork-born apprentice Tadhg O'Shea, 18, had his third winner when Helen Bach breezed up in the mile handicap, and trainer Michael Halford said: "He's a good little rider and he's got a future."
Colm's Rock, fifth in last year's Galway Plate, could have another tilt at the big race after winning the handicap chase under topweight yesterday.
"We had been thinking of a handicap chase on the day after the Plate but he's won well there," said trainer Frances Crowley. "His jumping can be a bit tricky but he was good today and we'll think of the Plate again now."
Shanillo was the outsider of the Pat Hughes duo in the handicap hurdle but made all to win easily. "That's a surprise," admitted Hughes. "The way he jumped at Cork last time, I thought he'd need more experience."
