WEATHER EYE ON TAHIYRA...
DERMOT WELD “would love another couple of weeks” with Tahiyra as the Aga Khan’s filly defends her unbeaten record – and her favourite’s status – in the 1,000 Guineas at Newmarket today.
Weld warned Siyouni’s daughter, Ladbrokes’ 9-4 market leader on the strength of a debut win at the Galway Festival last July and a two-anda-quarter-length supremacy in the Group 1 Moyglare Stud Stakes at the Curragh 47 days later, could miss the Qipcosponsored fillies’ Classic after being slow to come to hand this spring.
The master of Rosewell House is content to let Chris Hayes’s mount take her chance, but believes recent intemperate weather in Co Kildare has prevented Tahiyra from reaching her peak of condition.
“We’ve had a wet, damp, cold spring and some fillies and some fillies don’t come forward in these climactic conditions as others,” explained Weld (inset).
“It has been very in and out, our weather, and some of these fillies at this time of year – late April, the first week of May – they are only just coming and they will be better in two weeks.
“That would apply to this filly – she has been a little bit slower coming forward – and I’d love two weeks more with her.
“I would love to have got a run in the spring time in one of the Classic trials here, but she wasn’t forward enough.
“We are where we are, but is she ready to run? Yes, she is.”
Her five-and-a-halflength success from Aidan O’brien’s Dower House at Galway persuaded Weld to take aim at the highest level and Tahiyra justified the move with a defeat of Guineas rival and Ballydoyle trainee Meditate on Irish Champions Weekend last September.
“The ability that she showed when she won her maiden – she was very professional and quickened away from a good Galileo filly of Aidan’s,” Weld added.
“That’s why I said, ‘Look, I’m going to wait and go straight into the Moyglare with this one’.
“She doesn’t have the experience of the others – I accept that – but she’s healthy, sound and well, and takes her chance.”
QIPCO 1000 Guineas Today, 3.40pm, ITV