LOVELY.. JUB-LEE

Jockey Billy and Dreams should be all smiles as the action starts again at Naas

AFTER an 11-week break, Irish racing is back, behind closed doors, with a bumper eight-race card in Naas.

Two listed sprints and two juvenile maidens will be the main attraction and, placed twice in Group 1 company last season, Aidan Fogarty’s filly Forever In Dreams might prove best in the Anglesey Lodge Equine Woodlands Stakes.

Winner of a listed event in Haydock in May of last year, this daughter of Dream Ahead ran a corker when runner-up to Advertise in the Commonwealth Cup at Royal Ascot in her next start.

And she ended her three-year-old campaign for

Fogarty (inset) with another top effort, when third to Donjuan Triumphant in the Qipco British Champions Sprint at Ascot in October.

Billy Lee’s mount gets the nod over the Aidan O’brien-trained Sergei Prokofiev and Denis Hogan’s progressive and exciting Sceptical, a three-time winner at Dundalk over the winter, but not helped by the fact that his partner Joey Sheridan will be unable to claim his 7lb. allowance.

In the Kuroshio At Compas Committed 3-Y-0 Stakes, 109-rated Summer Sands, bought for 625,000 Guineas out of Richard Fahey’s, having won the

Redcar 2-Y-0 Trophy and finished third to Earthlight in the Group 1 Middle Park, sets the standard.

The Coach House colt, now trained by Joseph O’brien, might have the edge over stable-companion Alligator Alley and Ballydoyle runner Pistoletto.

A couple of two-year-old maidens open the card. The market should prove a good guide to races I’ll be watching closely with a view to finding future winners.

But Aidan O’brien holds the key to the colts’ maiden, with Lipizzaner set to lead a four-strong challenge which also includes Battleground, first foal of 2016 Arc heroine Found.

A son of Uncle Mo, Lipizzaner is the only runner with experience having failed by a half-length to Jim Bolger’s Poetic Flare over this route on the opening day of the 2020 season, eleven weeks ago.

That experience, and expected improvement, should make Seamus Heffernan’s mount tough to beat.

Ballydoyle filly More Beautiful, a half-sister to Guineas winner Saxon Warrior, is a tentative choice in the opener.

And Aidan O’brien supplies the nap, Yale, off a workable mark of 74, on his handicap debut, in the second division of the six-furlong Clinton Higgins Accountants Handicap.

BACK WITH A BANG Billy Lee and his mount Forever In Dreams can win the Woodlands Stakes at Naas