Snow Fairy can make it a magnificent seven Group 1's
Ed Dunlop’s remarkable mare will be seeking a seventh Group 1 success and there are solid reasons for thinking her well capable of achieving just that.
A year ago she ran So You Think to half a length in this contest and, if anything, the daughter of Intikhab is even better now.
She rounded of last season by taking a Grade 1 at Kyoto in Japan, but then sustained an injury and only reappared in a Group 1 at Deauville in France last month.
All logic indicated that Snow Fairy would surely need the run, but she displayed grim determination in the closing stages to beat the smart Izzi Top by three parts of a length.
John Gosden’s Nathaniel arrives on the back of landing the Eclipse at Sandown and then going under by a nose to the Prix de L’Arc de Triomphe winner, Danedream, in the King George at Ascot.
The only other to consider is St Nicholas Abbey, but he’s disappointed too often for comfort and is readily passed over.
Nathaniel is clearly going to be very hard to beat, but there remains the suspicion that he’s best at a mile and a half and with cut in the ground.
The surface is drying out all of the time and Snow Fairy will revel in that and also strikes one as more of a ten furlongs specialist.
Dermot Weld’s Emulous, very impressive when winning the race last year, is the choice in the other Group 1 on the card, the Coolmore Fusaichi Pegasus Matron Stakes.
She ran no sort of race when seventh at Royal Ascot in June, but that was too bad to be true and we have to place our faith in Weld to have nursed the five-year-old back to her best.
Weld’s Big Break, who enjoyed no luck in running when third to Magical Dream and Diamond Sky at Galway, can set the record straight in the Irish Stallion Farms’ EBF Fillies Maiden.
The nap vote goes to Willie Mullins’ Call Me Bubbles in the Irish Stallion Farms’ EBF Handicap. He has shown a lot of improvement this season, winning his only two races, at Roscommon and Galway.
Gelding the horse and a step up in trip seem to have been the making of him and Call Me Bubbles is fancied to defy a massive rise in the weights of 28lbs.
Feature event at the Curragh tomorrow is the Group 1 Moyglare Stud Stakes and, in a wide-open heat, My Special J’s is a hopeful choice to confirm her neck defeat of Harasiya on this track last time.
Caponata, grabbed late by Tannery here in July, can benefit from the extra furlong of the Irresistible Jewel Blandford Stakes and gets the nap.
