A spring setback to his star filly Agnes Stewart means Eddie Lynam won't be involved in the Curragh classics this weekend but the Co Meath trainer could still provide one of Saturday's highlights if his stalwart sprinter Sole Power makes a first start in Ireland for almost four years.
The five-time Group 1 winner hasn’t run in his native country since finishing runner-up in the Flying Five at HQ in 2011. That was just his 10th race in Ireland in an illustrious 47-race career that has seen him run 29 times since that last Curragh effort.
Sole Power’s big 2015 target is an attempt at a remarkable three-in-a-row in Royal Ascot’s Kings Stand Stakes next month but Lynam is keen to get a run into the eight-year-old star, either in Haydock’s Temple Stakes or the Group 2 Weatherbys Greenlands Stakes at the Curragh over six furlongs.
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The horse has famously never won at six furlongs and won the Temple in 2011, as well as finishing runner-up a year later, but ground conditions are likely to dictate where he pitches up on Saturday for a first start since a fine victory at Meydan on World Cup night.
“He’ll go wherever the ground comes up okay for him. Basically it’s all about the Kings Stand with him but like all of us as he’s getting older he’s getting heavier between his races so I’d like to get a run into him. If we get a win into him on the way to the Kings Stand, then great, but we’re ultimately looking at Ascot,” Lynam said.
"If the ground is okay I wouldn't mind running him at the Curragh and we know Richard Hughes will be there so there wouldn't be a problem in terms of a jockey. We'll simply have to see about ground," he added. Sole Power has been installed a 4-1 favourite for the Temple Stakes by some firms.
Agnes Stewart was a prime classic fancy during the winter and remains a 25-1 shot for the Epsom Oaks, but Lynam indicated it will be Royal Ascot’s Coronation Stakes over a mile next month that’s likely to be a first start of the season for last year’s May Hill winner.
“Agnes Stewart pulled a muscle in late March but she’s back in full work now and we plan to aim her at Royal Ascot and the Coronation Stakes,” said the trainer, whose Queen Mary-winning filly Anthem Alexander is likely to have her Royal Ascot warm-up in either Haydock’s Sandy Lane Stakes or the Lacken Stakes at Naas.
Hughes was a Tattersalls Irish 2,000 Guineas winner on Canford Cliffs in 2010 and Britain’s champion jockey will be on board Ivawood at the Curragh on Saturday as part of a two-pronged classic attack by trainer Richard Hannon.
Estidhkaar will attempt to bounce back from his Newmarket Guineas flop at the Curragh and provide his trainer with a win in a race his father Richard Hannon Snr famously won on three occasions.
Dips and ridges
“Ivawood showed us at Newmarket, when third to Gleneagles, that he was a lot better than he looked in the Greenham at Newbury. He is a big colt and maybe he wasn’t as fast as we thought he was in the trial but you saw the real Ivawood in the Guineas. We aren’t claiming he would have beaten Gleneagles but we might have been a length or two closer had we not been drawn out in the middle,” Hannon reported.
“Estidhkaar in contrast never ran a race in the Guineas. He didn’t enjoy the dips and ridges of the Rowley Mile when he injured himself in last year’s Dewhurst so we think the Curragh will suit him better. He worked really well when Dane O’Neill came to sit on him on Saturday and he can also expect easier ground in Ireland which will suit,” he added.
Reports of that weekend workout have provoked Paddy Power into making Estidhkaar an 8-1 shot for Ireland’s first classic of 2015.
Gleneagles is now a 1-2 favourite to become just the eighth colt to complete the Newmarket-Curragh Guineas double.
