NEWS: Hawk Wing, as short as 9 to 2 favourite for the Sagitta 2,000 Guineas, will not have a warm-up race before the first Classic of the season.

The National Stakes winner holds an entry for Sunday's Gladness Stakes at the Curragh but will not take it up.

"It's not planned that Hawk Wing will run anywhere before the English Guineas. If he does go for the Guineas it will be without a run," Aidan O'Brien said yesterday.

The Ballydoyle trainer also said that the Dewhurst and Grand Criterium winner Rock Of Gibraltar will probably follow a similar route, with the French Guineas at Longchamp a possible target.

"If a horse is going for the English or French Guineas, the Tetrarch Stakes here doesn't suit. It's really just a trial for the Irish Guineas," O'Brien added.

In the shorter term, however, it's looking more likely that Johannesburg will run in Sunday's Gladness rather than Saturday's Fosters International Trial on the dirt at Lingfield on Saturday.

O'Brien confirmed the Curragh is the preferred option provided the ground is suitable and that the Beresford winner Castle Gandolfo will sub for the Breeders' Cup hero wherever he doesn't go.

As for an intended tilt at the Kentucky Derby, O'Brien told some American newspapers: "It's a huge step. All we can do is try. He was a freak as a two-year-old. We're hoping he'll be a freak at three. Last year he looked a nailed-on miler. Asking him to go a mile and a quarter is a huge step. We're going into the unknown. He looks like he has made improvement but we won't know until the race."

The trainer has left his options open for the first of the French Derby trials, the Group Two Prix Noailles at Longchamp on Sunday, by leaving in Ballingarry and High Chaparral.