TRANQUIL SEA has been the Irish horse for ante-post money in the run up to today’s Paddy Power Gold Cup at Cheltenham but there will be plenty of goodwill around compatriot Northern Alliance and beleaguered rider Paul Carberry.
The former champion jockey teams up with Tony Martin for the big race and victory for Northern Alliance would be very popular after Carberry, currently in counselling for his use of alcohol, was earlier this week handed a 30 race day ban in Ireland from the Turf Club.
He also teams up with Martin for the ride on Green Mile in the Listed handicap hurdle on a card with huge Irish interest and which could see the visitors record a first win in the big race for 29 years.
Tranquil Sea won well on his first start of the season and his jockey Andrew McNamara said yesterday: “He did it very nicely at Naas and I think that was a good prep for a race like this. He’s gone up 8lbs but I suppose he deserves it.”
McNamara and Tranquil Sea’s trainer Edward O’Grady switch their focus to France tomorrow where Jumbo Rio will face 10 opponents in the Grade One Prix Renaud Du Vivier, a €270,000 contest over almost two and a half miles at Auteuil.
Aidan O’Brien’s focus will also be on Paris this afternoon where the champion trainer attempts to secure an 11th Group One victory in 2009 when he pitches a trio of horses into the Criterium de Saint-Cloud over 10 furlongs.
O’Brien has won Europe’s final top-flight flat prize of the year three times already, including with Fame And Glory last year, and bids to maintain his dominance of Europe’s juvenile scene this season with a team that includes Johnny Murtagh’s mount Don Carlos.
Ballydoyle also run Mikhail Glinka (Séamus Heffernan) and Banyan Tree (Colm O’Donoghue) in a nine-runner field that contains just two French-trained horses.
Racing at Cork tomorrow is dependent on a 7.30 inspection tomorrow morning due to the weekend’s weather forecast.
If it does go ahead, the three and a half mile Cork Grand National will take some getting and conditions could be against Willie Mullins’s Our Monty. Bellflower Boy is out of the handicap proper but ran an encouraging race at Limerick last weekend.
Mullins, though, has strong ammunition on the rest of the card with the good bumper horses, Quadrillon, Sicilian Secret and Skorcher.
