Monashee Mountain ready to go

Barely have we drawn breath from Cheltenham and the flat season steals up on us. For many in Ireland it's the signal to pack away all that winter tweed and tuck into man size gripes about "glorified greyhound racing taking over"! However, in the year 2000 such people could miss so much.

Not that the central human figure will probably be different. Aidan O'Brien, after the late anxieties of preparing Ireland's benchmark jumper Istabraq, quipped at Cheltenham: "The flat will be easy after this." The Ballydoyle trainer almost made it look easy in 1999, after all.

A total of 102 winners in Ireland muscled alongside the high profile success of the champion sprinter, Stravinsky, and the almost total domination of Europe's top juvenile races.

The top eight horses in the Irish rankings were O'Brien-trained, and although Fasliyev is retired, not even the halcyon days of Vincent O'Brien saw a single stable with the potential classic strength in depth that Ballydoyle has for this season.

It's a quite remarkable reservoir of talent that O'Brien dips into for tomorrow's Loughbrown Stakes and what a catch he has made for the first day of the season.

Monashee Mountain, a $1 million son of Danzig, may have the panzer-like bulk of another potential top sprinter, but despite the presence of officially higher rated stablemates like Giants Causeway, Bernstein and Mull Of Kintyre, there are those who will tell you this is the Ballydoyle dark horse.

Only comparatively dark, mind you, as the impression Monashee Mountain made on his June debut at Leopardstown and a subsequent Group Three success at the same track in late October has been enough to make him as low as 12 to 1 with Ladbrokes for the Sagitta 2,000 Guineas.

Because of that Group win, Monashee Mountain has to give 7lbs plus to some worthwhile opposition, including the National Stakes third, Jammaal, but if the Guineas is a realistic option, the first of the O'Brien potential superstars has to win tomorrow.

Dermot Weld (77 winners) and his jockey Pat Smullen (72), who finished 20 behind Michael Kinane, had to give best to the Ballydoyle rampage last season but still relatively did very well and can repeat that again tomorrow.

Weld runs the former winner Tarry Flynn and River Canyon in the £50,000 Lincolnshire, and preference is for the latter, who Smullen has elected to ride on the strength of smart early season form in 1999, which included a third to Tarfaa and Stravinsky in the Loughbrown and a third to Port Bayou in the Derrinstown.

Weld and Smullen are also taken to score in the Madrid Handicap with Final Exam; but the power of Ballydoyle is only emphasised by their representative in the opening race of the season, the two-year-old maiden. With breeding so important in the circumstances, it's hard not to be impressed by Modigliani, a Danzig half brother to the dual-Guineas winner Rodrigo De Triano.