Richard Quinn and Richard Hills are on standby to ride the Godolphin pair Melikah and Teggiano who were as expected supplemented yesterday for Sunday's Kildangan Stud Irish Oaks.
Cross-channel stables have a remarkable modern record in the classic and with seven of the 12 fillies left in the race trained in Britain, the bookies believe they will add to their tally on Sunday.
Double Derby-winning jockey Johnny Murtagh has been booked to ride Petrushka on Sunday. He replaces the injured Kieren Fallon on the Michael Stoute-trained filly. "Johnny Murtagh will ride her. We weren't quite sure because there was a filly of the Aga Khan's that might have run but isn't now," said Harry Herbert, manager of the filly's owners, Highclere Thoroughbred Racing.
Paddy Power have installed the Epsom runner-up Kalypso Katie as their 15 to 8 favourite to succeed last year's winner Ramruma with Melikah and Petrushka, third and fourth at Epsom, dominating the rest of the market.
Just three times in the last 15 years have Irish trainers managed to keep the Oaks at home and British yards enjoyed a remarkable uninterrupted run of success from 1985 to 1995 which included the dead heaters Dimenuendo and Melodist in 1988.
Petrushka's trainer Michael Stoute has won the Oaks five times but the only other trainer with an entry left who has won the classic before is Dermot Weld who has left in Theoretically.
The Oaks and the 1,000 Guineas are the only Irish classics that Godolphin have to win but they are going to make a concentrated effort at redressing the balance on Sunday.
Spokesman Simon Crisford said yesterday: "Both fillies run and Richard Quinn and Richard Hills have been booked to ride them. But we don't know yet who will be on what. We will leave that until later in the week."
Quinn was an Irish Oaks winner on Paul Cole's Knight's Baroness in 1990 but Hills has yet to open his winning account in the Irish classics.
Of the five home entries in the Oaks, Preseli is the shortest priced with Powers on 7 to 1 while Aidan O'Brien, also looking to open his Oaks account, has left in Amethyst and the soft ground loving Chiang-Mai. My Delilah is a doubtful runner.
Sunday's supporting race, the Anglesey Stakes, features nine horses left in by Aidan O'Brien but Eddie Lynam is taking up the challenge with his Goffs Challenge winner Berlin who was supplemented for the Group Three pot yesterday for £5,250.
"He's come out of the Goffs race and he is going to take his chance. I believe he's a very good horse," said Lynam. Other Anglesey entries are the British pair Pan Jammer and Karl Burke's Lost At Sea.
At Dundalk this evening Jim Bolger's fine handicapper Citizen Edward goes for a four-timer in the Carrickdale Handicap and even with 10.1 on his back, Citizen Edward will be hard to beat.
Althib ran an okay race behind Evrobi at Cork last week and should improve for the extra mile of the Bar-One Handicap while jockey Pat Smullen can earlier have scored in the mile and a half maiden on Goldnblues who has something in hand on the ratings.
Biddy Blackhurst has had to fill the three spot in her last three starts but maybe Jim Gorman's charge has her chance to improve now in the Carlingford Handicap.
Danceabout can set the record straight for Geoff Wragg in the sportingodds.com Falmouth Stakes at Newmarket today. Her trainer has suffered two major reverses in this Group Two event in recent years, with the defeat of smart fillies Rebecca Sharp and Balisada - beaten favourite 12 months ago.
But Danceabout has every chance of adding to his success with Inchmurrin in 1988 when the race was known as the Child Stakes.
The 53-year-old teams up with the unbeaten Bravado, who can upstage more fashionably-trained rivals in the July Stakes.
