RYAN TRIO ARE SET TO FLY Moore Can have it all tonight
AIDAN O’BRIEN’S seasonal debut in Ireland and the presence of Ryan Moore will add spice to tonight’s eight-race card in Dundalk.
Moore has been riding out in Ballydoyle all week and rides three of O’brien’s five runners, notably 116-rated filly I Can Fly, which appears to have a straight-forward task in the fourrunner Run For Your Money Betvictor Fillies Race.
After such a mild winter, O’brien, inset, is, presumably, anxious to get his team rolling with the turf season little more than three weeks away, and World Cup night in Dubai a week later.
I Can Fly was last seen when finishing down the field in the Breeders Cup Mile at Churchill Downs in November.
But her overall form, a listed win at Killarney and success in the Group 2 Clipper Logistics Boomerang at Leopardstown on Champions Weekend, when she beat Kenya, make her unopposable, despite concerns about her fitness, at this level.
Now a four-year-old, I Can Fly’s form last season also included a neck defeat by Roaring Lion in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes at
Ascot.
Rated 17lb superior to chief rival and Dundalk specialist Surrounding, the Ballydoyle filly should make a winning start to what could develop into a highly successful four-year-old campaign.
O’brien runs three in the listed Patton Stakes, a race he won last year with Mendelssohn, with Moore set to partner highest-rated Western Australia, which ended his juvenile campaign with a close third to stable-companion Magna Grecia in the Group 1 Futurity at Doncaster in October.
Although sure to be at his best over further, Western Australia (rated 110) sets the standard, receiving 5lb from 107rated stable-companion Van Beethoven while Michael Halford’s progressive colt Playa Del Puente, twice a winner on the polytrack and enjoying a fitness advantage, could be a threat to all.
The other Ballydoyle runner is once-raced U S S Michigan, a close second in a Curragh maiden in June, in the six-furlong maiden, in which he must race from the outside stall.
Market moves won’t be an accurate guide to the relative fitness of the Ballydoyle runners, so tread carefully.