Irish 1,000 Guineas at the Curragh

there are just three poor jumping cards in the U.K. today, but in Ireland we have another very high-class card at the Curragh featuring two Group One races. There are no fewer than 18 fillies declared for the Irish 1,000 Guineas at 16.55 CET, but there is a very high likelihood that Aidan O´Brien will take this race for the 8th time. He has 3 runners declared with son Joseph on Kissed by Angels, Ryan Moore on last season´s top 2yo filly Found and Seamie Heffernan on no-hoper Qualify. Coolmore has already won both Newmarket Guineas this season,as well as yesterday´s Irish 2,000, with Ryan Moore in the saddle each time and we expect the same result today. Found missed the English 1,000 after a minor setback and instead ran in a small race here and was surprisingly breaten on very bad ground, but we don´t see that as a problem on this much better going. Kissed by Angels was an easy winner at Leopardstown last time and could be the main danger, but we also respect the two fillies saddled by both Jessica Harrington and Dermot Weld
Weld was also hoping to win the main supporting race, the Tattersalls Gold Cup over 10 furlongs at 16.20 with his potential champion Free Eagle, but he has had to be withdrawn and instead Weld now relies on Fascinating Rock (Pat Smullen),who beat Parish Hall (Jim Bolger/ Kevin Manning) over this CD lst time, but they both need to show much more to threaten Al Kazeem (Roger Charlton/ James Doyle) and The Grey Gatsby (Kevin Ryan/ Moore), two of the best horses in the world over this trip. The former was runner-up to Cirrus des Aigles last time, while the latter was second to Solow at Meydan - and these two top French performers clash this afternoon at Longchamp. We expect these two to fight it out today with preference for The Grey Gatsby, who had Al Kazeem well behind when winning last year´s Irish Champion.

Betting forecast:
1. Race: Stamp Hill - Painted Cliffs - Independence Day
2. Race: Russian Soul - Kimbay - Captain Cullen
3. Race: Clonard Street - Prince Gagarin - Curvy
4. Race: Postponed - Fascinating Rock - Parish Hall
5. Race: Bocca Baciata - Kissed By Angels - Pleascach
6. Race: Ballybacka Queen - Neverushacon - Papa`s Way
7. Race: Silwana - Unrequited - Mandatario
8. Race: Mutazen - Ashoka - Brightly Shining