Tipperary trainer Fozzy Stack will hope to add to a milestone season by getting the whole Ladbrokes Ayr Gold Cup pie on Saturday.
It is eight years since Stack’s Son Of Rest made history in the sprint handicap by becoming a first Irish-trained winner. However, he shared the prize in a dead heat with Baron Bolt. Now Stack is back for another crack at one of the biggest betting handicaps of the year with Bodhi Bear.
Jockey Sam James has been snapped up for the sole Irish hope in a typically competitive field of 25 runners. Stack is also applying first-time blinkers to the four-year-old, who ran fourth to Big Mojo in a Curragh Group Three on his last start. He’d previously won twice this season at Naas and the Curragh.
It has been a hugely successful campaign so far for Stack, who scooped a first European Group One prize in July when Thesecretadversary landed the Prix Jean Prat at Deauville, France.
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Never previously successful at Royal Ascot, in June he sent two horses to the renowned meeting and both won: the two-year-old Nola Soul landed the Chesham Stakes while Thesecretadversary was successful in the Jersey.
On Saturday Stack has a single runner at Gowran – Saxonian in the 3.15pm – where the Group Three Cordell Lavarack & Lanwades Stud Stakes also features. A dozen are due to line up in the latter, including last year’s seven-length winner Faiyum.
Recent ease in the going should suit the Ger Lyons runner, although she faces something of an unknown quantity in the unbeaten Star Performer. Joseph O’Brien’s filly landed the Hurry Harriet over course distance last time and should still be progressing.
Aidan O’Brien had a winner this week, although punters might be forgiven for tiptoeing around his runners given last weekend’s dramatic announcement that a low-grade infection has been an issue in Ballydoyle for some months.
Nevertheless, he looks to have the winning of both Gowran juvenile maidens. Nevermindtherain goes in the fillies version while Albany County should be hard to beat later, given he found only his stable companion Darkness Falls too good at the Curragh last month.
Darkness Falls subsequently won a Group One and is already being spoken of by his trainer in terms of being a potential Triple Crown horse next year.
“Darkness Falls could be our first Triple Crown horse since Camelot. He looks to have the capacity to stay, he has that speed,” O’Brien told coolmore.com.
“The next place to go with him is the thing. Do we go to the Dewhurst or the Futurity Trophy? It’s possible he could go to the Dewhurst, he could have the pace for it. He is unusual. He has a super mind. He’s a great traveller and he quickens, so we’ll see how he is.”
Jumps action returns to Navan on Saturday and the focus is also over jumps for Sunday’s start of the 2026 Listowel Harvest Festival. The opening day feature is a €45,000 handicap chase where Cork trainer Mick Winters can strike now that Crowsatedappletart is back over fences.
