RACING:THOSE DETERMINED to write-off Homecoming Queen's nine-length rout of her opposition at Newmarket earlier this month as a 25 to 1 fluke have just seven alternatives to Aidan O'Brien's star when she attempts to complete a 1,000 Guineas double at the Curragh tomorrow.
Just two fillies – Attraction (2004) and Finsceal Beo (2007) – have pulled off the Newmarket-Curragh double in the past and anyone unwilling to believe the bare evidence of Homecoming Queen’s romp 20 days ago could be guilty of over-complicating things.
The half-sister to Dylan Thomas did after all win the hard way at Newmarket, making all, and nothing in behind looked to have any major excuse. Instead the fourth home, The Fugue, has won the Musidora since. That’s form of a calibre that has her over half a stone clear of everything else on official figures.
A worry could be that Homecoming Queen ran seven times as a juvenile before winning, and that came when she first encountered ground with a dig in it. However, she beat Fire Lily on good ground at Leopardstown last month and it could easily be the case that she is simply a filly rapidly on the improve.
Instead, ground conditions could be a factor in the chance of the filly bookmakers reckon is her major threat. Yellow Rosebud found only Maybe too good for her in last year’s Debutante and made a perfectly satisfactory debut in 2012 when beating Devotion in a trial at Leopardstown. However, she has yet to meet any surface as quick as the one at the Curragh this weekend and Devotion also provides the O’Brien team with an ideal form-link.
Ryan Moore was on Homecoming Queen at Newmarket but is on her stable companion After this time. The French Guineas fourth could emerge as a place proposition this time while the sole English hope Samitar looks outclassed.
Aidan O’Brien has completed this weekend’s Group One hat-trick twice before and whatever about his Classic fate there’s no getting away from So You Think as a likely back-to-back winner of the Tattersalls Gold Cup.
Circumstances have changed with the Aussie star who arrived here last year as the next big-thing. He subsequently proved himself top-class in European terms with an Eclipse defeat of Workforce but hardly the world-beater his reputation Down Under cracked him up to be.
Whether he will be A1 fit after a break since Meydan is uncertain and St Nicholas Abbey’s Group Three defeat here proved the danger of wading in heavy on Ballydoyle hotpots. But for a Group One So You Think should be sharp enough for Famous Name and Bible Belt.
The Group Three winner Crius will relish fast ground in the Gallinule Stakes and can beat the home team despite conceding weight all-round while Jessica Harrington’s booking of Ryan Moore for Backbench Blues in the big mile-and-a-half handicap looks significant.
