Irish weekend preview: The adage that "a week is a long time in politics" is one that can be equally applied to racing.

Just think back to lunchtime on Saturday last when coming out of a flat season in which retention of the trainers' championship for 2004 had done little to console Aidan O'Brien for the shortage of Group One success.

The first month had seen a series of classic trialists fail through lack of fitness, occasioned by the unwonted wetness of the Ballydoyle gallops.

That was then. Now the pressure is off after a Newmarket Guineas double that had eluded all Irish-based trainers, while at Chester yesterday the much touted stable Derby candidate Gypsy King got up in the last stride to win the Dee Stakes.

Through his lack of inexperience he made things so extraordinarily hard for himself.

A slow start, a jumping exhibition worthy of a future Triumph Hurdle hopeful, an apparent hopeless last place on such a tight circuit at the halfway mark and then a determination to make for the stand rail in the straight all combined together to tempt the layers on Betfair to field against the favourite in running.

There might not be sufficient time in which to overcome the deficiencies in the matter of education but his ability to win an Epsom Derby is hard to question, the more so as he probably would have won yesterday's race by a wider margin if it had been run over the Classic distance.

Tomorrow Grand Central, another of Aidan O'Brien's Derby hopefuls, attempts to atone for a three and a half length defeat by Alayan on his season debut at Leopardstown.

He may well reverse those placings in the Derrinstown Stud Derby Trial Stakes tomorrow but even so may still not be up to ending the winning sequence of David Wachman's Fracas, who had this week's Chester Vase winner, Hattan, back in third when winning the Betfred Classic Trial at Sandown and is one of the discoveries of the season.

The same sponsors also support a 1,000 Guineas Trial and here the centre of attraction will be Jessica Harrington's Jazz Princess.

Her first two wins in modest auction races did not prepare one for the sight of her thrashing a top notch international field in the C.L. Weld Park Stakes.

She strung them out to win by three lengths from Saoire and Virginia Waters with Adaala beaten six and a half lengths into fourth place. While Virginia Waters overturned the form with Saoire by half a dozen lengths when lifting the Newmarket Guineas, it was still a striking performance by Jazz Princess, who could well be the second leg of a mixed big-race double for her trainer.

Barry Geraghty will have the ride on Harrington's Killarney runner Callow Lake and is tipped to beat Mansony in the Murphys Irish Stout Handicap Hurdle.

Kilbeggan associated with racing on Mondays or Fridays, experiments with a Saturday fixture where Laetitia is the bumper race nap.