By noon today the final confirmation of the Budweiser Irish Derby field will be known and with a sizeable cross-channel challenge to Galileo now likely to be headed by Golan and Tobougg, the overseas flavour can continue at tonight`s festival opening courtesy of Roundtree.
Confined juvenile contests at the Curragh are a speciality of trainer Richard Hannon as proved by four successive wins in the Tattersalls equivalent to this evening`s Goffs £100,000 Challenge.
In Roundtree, a £39,000 yearling purchase after securing as £16,000 price tag as a foal, Hannon looks to have a filly ideal for this race considering she was a slightly unlucky third to Queens Logic and Sophisticat in the Queen Mary Stakes at Royal Ascot last week.
"She had to race on her own for a bit that day," Hannon said yesterday. "But she is in good form, I don`t think the furlong extra will be a problem and I don`t think the ground will worry her. She also has a good draw."
Roundtree can also be a welcome big-race winner for her jockey Dane O`Neill. The 25-year-old from Monkstown in Cork left for a stint in Hong Kong last year and since coming back, the winners have not flowed with their normal regularity for the 1996 champion apprentice.
The best of the local team could be the Tipperary winner Minashki who put three lengths between himself and Steaming Home at the Junction. Harry Rogers has tasted big flat-race success in last year`s Golden Pages Handicap but Roundtree`s Queen Mary effort does make her very hard to oppose.
O`Neill could have a good evening as he has been booked in the mile and a quarter handicap for the Tipperary winner Intensity whose three-parts of a length defeat of Citizen Edward was advertised by the latter`s dead heat in the Ulster Harp Derby six days ago.
Dermot Weld and Pat Smullen, who team up with Vinnie Roe in Sunday`s Derby, can get the weekend off to a good start courtesy of Gold Chaser in the mile handicap and Beyond The Pole in the last.
The latter`s short head second to the subsequent Ribblesdale winner Sahara Slew at Leopardstown makes him a stand out bet but he will hardly be a reasonable price, while Gold Chaser ran an impressive second to Clare Rose at Gowran last Sunday, a race that should have put him spot on for this.
Cartherine Gannon and Mary Williamson, John Oxx`s very capable apprentices, ride the stable duo Dearly and Paris In The Fall in the apprentice Derby. On balance Dearly`s Clonmel maiden win looks marginally the better and Gannon can pick up the valuable pot.
The five-furlong handicap may fall to Miracle Ridge.
