Longer trip should enable Portage to build on promising debut

The nap vote at the Curragh tomorrow goes to Michael Halford’s once-raced Portage in the Irish Stallion Farms’ EBF Maiden.

Feature event, of course, is the €200,000 Group 1 Keeneland Phoenix Stakes, but this is fiercely competitive and it may pay to look in a different direction in an effort to show a profit.

Portage is a far more inviting possibility to build on the promise of his debut run here last month. It would be no great exaggeration to say the son of Teofilo had no idea what he was doing, at least for the majority of the seven furlongs.