If any trainer qualifies for the tag of "festival king" it is surely Dermot Weld and he can prove the point yet again at Killarney this evening with a treble.
The middle bout of the three-day meet is something of a marathon with eight races but punters would be well advised to last it out with Peerless Motion waiting in the last.
Two placed efforts have shown that Peerless Motion is well capable of picking up a bumper and he should be up to handling the expected soft ground.
He opened his career with a runner-up spot to Hobart Frisbey at Leopardstown and followed that with a third to Alexander Prize at Navan. Both winners are good sorts and there appears nothing of that quality here.
A possible exception may be Enterprising who was a good second to Hurry Bob at Punchestown or maybe Timmy Hyde's Dunowen. The positive way of looking at that is that Peerless Motion should be a reasonable price, probably a nap price.
Weld's stable jockey Pat Smullen takes the ride on Gates in the Heineken Handicap and the drop back in trip from his length and a half second to Shannon Arch at Navan could work to his advantage.
Silvian Bliss, beaten a neck by Toast The Spreece when favourite for the 1997 Lincoln and a hurdles winner in the same year, returns to the track in the beginners chase and wouldn't have to be fully wound up to cope with most of these.
An interesting filly in the Kingdom Maiden is Institutrice who meets easier company than in her two previous races. Last year she encountered Sunspangled and St Clair Ridge at Galway and at Gowran recently ran into the progressive Aspen Leaves. Those are pretty big names, certainly bigger than those against Kevin Prendergast's filly today.
