RACING NEWS:THE 2009 European champion juvenile St Nicholas Abbey is on course to make his first start in almost a year at the Curragh on Sunday where the star filly Lolly For Dolly will attempt to pull off an early Group Three double for this season in the feature event.
Lolly For Dolly, winner of the Park Express Stakes at HQ 10 days ago, is one of 11 entered for the €60,000 Big Bad Bob Gladness Stakes and was confirmed a runner yesterday.
“She will go to the Curragh and she will wear the blinkers again. She came out of the last race well and ground conditions should be fine the way they are,” said James “Fozzy” Stack, son of trainer Tommy Stack, yesterday.
Last year’s Gladness winner Kargali is entered for another crack at the seven-furlong event for older horses while there are a pair of cross-channel hopefuls, Dandy Nicholls’s Prix Foret fourth, Regal Parade, and The Cheka from Eve Johnson-Houghton’s yard.
Dermot Weld has left his own Group Three-winner Emulous in the Gladness and has also kept open the option of Sunday’s Geegeez.co.uk Alleged Stakes for his Triumph Hurdle runner-up Unaccompanied.
However the star name remaining among the 15 entries in the Alleged is St Nicholas Abbey who hasn’t raced since proving a bitterly disappointing favourite for last year’s Newmarket 2,000 Guineas.
The 2009 Racing Post Trophy winner worked after racing at the Curragh 10 days ago and trainer Aidan O’Brien has indicated the enigmatic son of Montjeu will have his first start of a four-year-old campaign at the weekend.
Just 10 entries remain in Sunday’s other Listed event, the Anne Brewster Memorial Loughbrown Stakes, including four possible starters from Jim Bolger’s yard.
The Bolger quartet include Glor Na Mara, still a maiden, but whose high-class form includes a third to Frankel in the Dewhurst Stakes and a second to Zoffany in the Phoenix Stakes.
Ground conditions on the Curragh’s straight course yesterday were “yielding” with the round course described as “good to yielding”.
Limerick’s Sunday card will include the Grade Two Hugh McMahon Novice Chase and Quito De La Roque is among the 18 entries left in the three-mile event after missing out on the Cheltenham festival.
Roi Du Mee is another possible starter for Michael O’Leary’s Gigginstown Stud team.
