Sometimes you just need a stalwart to hold things together.
Rain has blighted some of the highlights to the elite British programme this season, and it threatens to halt the race of the year in Ireland on Saturday night, as well.
Leopardstown Racecourse was expected to receive 25mm of rain yesterday evening, and although Saturday night’s Irish Champion Stakes will be staged on fresh ground, the precipitation could wash away all hope of seeing Aidan O’Brien’s dual Guineas winner Gleneagles for the first time since Royal Ascot in June.
Golden Horn, the English Derby winner who was set to travel this morning from John Gosden’s Newmarket base to Ireland, is a likely runner, but having been scratched from the King George and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at the 11th hour in July, nothing is certain.
That may leave the indefatigable Cirrus Des Aigles to form the backbone of the cast that will definitely turn up for the Group 1 race over 2,400 metres.
The evergreen nine year old arrived in Ireland by plane, and trainer Corine Barande-Barbe traveled full of hope, safe in the knowledge that her flag-bearer will appreciate any rain the heavens send.
The 2012 Dubai Sheema Classic winner has not been seen since pulling off a shoe behind Dubai Turf winner Solow in May, an unfortunate occurrence that strained one of his tendons.
He was given the summer off and had a final spin earlier this week with two of Barande-Barbe’s 20 horses in her Chantilly stables.
“I think I have him back to his best form – the same as before the Prix Ganay,” she said. “He never breaks hearts on the gallops, only on the racecourse.
“I am quite confident.”
Barande-Barbe has a glass-half-full approach to life, and should Golden Horn and Gleneagles turn up Cirrus Des Aigles may well have too much on his plate.
In addition to the two outstanding colts of this European season, Free Eagle is also pitched in to race alongside The Grey Gatsby, last year’s winner whom he beat by a matter of centimetres in the Prince Of Wales’s Stakes at Royal Ascot.
Godolphin have a rich history in the Irish Champion Stakes, having won it five times, and with Jim Bolger on the board twice, his Yorkshire Oaks winner Pleascach will be a formidable opponent carrying the royal blue silks.
Not surprisingly, Barande-Barbe is unconcerned.
“I am thinking of making a collage of all the good horses he has beaten in the past,” she said. “Why not more?”
The Irish Champion Stakes is one of 21 Group races in Europe this weekend, with the Group 1 Matron Stakes sharing the limelight in Ireland, the St Leger at Doncaster leading the way in England and Treve’s return to Longchamp in the Prix Vermeille tomorrow the highlight in France.
Meydan form is represented in the Matron Stakes by Cladocera, the French filly who won twice in Dubai in the winter but has struggled since, and Euro Charline, who was fourth to Solow in March but has yet to win this summer.
Both appear to have it all to do with English Guineas and Nassau Stakes winner Legatissimo and dual Group 1 winner Amazing Maria both in the line-up for the 1,600m contest.
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