RITE OF Passage has proved that top sire Giant’s Causeway can produce high-class dual-purpose horses and Giant’s Quest can confirm the point again at Killarney this evening in the featured Kingdom Gold Cup.
An ultra-competitive field of 15 runners are due line up in the €35,000 premier handicap including a pair of Ballydoyle runners and representatives from the Oxx, Weld, Harrington and Bolger yards.
The Weld runner, Celebrity Sevi, is at the bottom of the weights so Pat Smullen is free to again team up with Giant’s Quest, who the champion jockey guided to a maiden victory at Ballinrobe last month on his first start under flat rules.
The Australian-bred had previously competed in bumpers, winning the last of them at Cork in May, and that Ballinrobe success (backed from 5 to 2 to 5 to 6) only confirmed the expectations of his Newbridge trainer Dermot Kelly.
Giant’s Quest has been handed a rating of 83 by the handicapper and in a race containing a plentiful supply of well-exposed types, that could turn out to be a winning opportunity.
Daffern Seal has just the fourth start of his career tonight in the novice chase and Dermot Weld’s runner can follow up an impressive fencing debut at the Galway festival. That came on the back of a single bumper start in 2009 and a maiden hurdle victory at Kilbeggan earlier in the summer. He looked a very different proposition in the new discipline though and looks strong enough to beat a bunch of other novice winners.
On paper French Quebec boasts an eye-catching piece of form having finished third to La Collina at Limerick in June. She lines up today in a maiden that was won in the past by Classic winners in Vintage Tipple (2002) and Alexandrova (2005.)
A better option though could be Aidan O’Brien’s Purple, a daughter of Galileo and the Moyglare winner Necklace.
