Our man reflects on a shock winner of the Ballysax and highlights the horses to follow from Sunday's meeting at Leopardstown.
Star shines under Heffernan
It’s not often the Ballysax Stakes doesn’t make so much as a ripple on the antepost Derby market, but that was the case on Sunday following Dallas Star’s shock success.
The Cloth Of Stars colt, last year trained by Dominic Ffrench Davis and now with County Westmeath cattle farmer-come-trainer Adrian Murray in Ireland, wasn’t given an Epsom entry – though he does hold one for the Irish Derby at the Curragh – and winning jockey Seamie Heffernan was already talking in terms of a potential St Leger horse in his post-race interview on Racing TV, which was quite revealing.
Long-time Ballydoyle servant Heffernan no doubt took a great deal of satisfaction in seeing off three Aidan O’Brien representatives, plus the Paddy Twomey-trained Deepone, aboard the 50/1 outsider, and he’d clearly been instructed to make the 10-furlong Group 3 a proper test on what was a very taxing racing surface.
Frankel colt The Euphrates (7/1) ended up being best of the rest in a slow-motion, survival-of-the-fittest kind of finish, but he doesn’t look Derby class either, while Illinois – as short at 20/1 for Epsom going into it and sent off 8/11 under Ryan Moore – was being shoved along long before the turn in and only briefly looked like getting involved before his petrol gauge was running on empty.
Illinois, one of just three sons of Galileo (his final full crop of three-year-olds) trained by Aidan O’Brien in the Derby at the time of writing, had his juvenile form franked by Criterium de Saint-Cloud fourth Bracken’s Laugh at Chelmsford on Saturday, but has plenty to prove if he’s to going to be up to Classic level.
Getting on some proper spring ground can surely only help, although he was well proven on soft (very soft in France) from last year so it can hardly be put forward as the sole excuse.
Expect Twomey colt to step up
The horse to take out of the Ballysax is the penalised (5lb) Deepone, who kept the eventual winner company up front for much of the race and travelled enthusiastically under Billy Lee on his first run of the season.
Having started the turn for home in front, he was the only one still on the bit approaching the two-furlong marker and just looked a non-stayer on the day.
Lee wasn’t hard on him when Dallas Star and the O’Brien pair came by inside the last furlong, and I’m sure there will be other days for the 2023 Beresford winner.
On this basis, he looks likely to drop back in trip for his next start and he deserves a crack at an Irish 2,000 Guineas trial, especially with that Curragh form in mind.
Debut brimming with potential
Twomey no doubt has the Curragh’s big early-season meeting in mind for A Lilac Rolla too after she made a winning comeback in the Ballylinch Stud ‘Priory Belle’ Stakes, but the most eyecatching performance of the day came from O’Brien newcomer Wingspan in the fillies’ maiden.
The beautifully-bred daughter of Dubawi is out of Guineas heroine Hermosa and possesses plenty of the family talent on this evidence, beating the experienced Nativity Square by a length and a half despite looking green when asked for her effort on the bend.
She coped admirably with the heavy going and was well on top at the line. There are no big-race entries to her name at all yet, suggesting she’s not the flashiest with her homework, but as far as three-year-old debuts go, this smacked of a horse with real potential.
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