Racing: After much cogitation Dermot Weld has decided to give Grey Swallow a prep in Sunday's €50,000 added listed Leopardstown 2,000 Guineas Trial Stakes rather than head straight to Newmarket where he will be bidding to credit the stable with its second consecutive 2,000 Guineas.

Considering the near disastrous circumstances that surrounded his intended debut at last year's Irish Derby Festival meeting his hesitation is understandable. Then Grey Swallow had been declared for the opening race on the Friday evening and had attracted mammoth wagers in the ring down to 2 to 1 on.

After he had been successfully loaded the colt drawn beside him became most excitable and this proved contagious with Grey Swallow in turn rearing up and getting his forelegs jammed on the central partition. It was a miracle that he came out of it not merely alive but without actually incurring serious injury.

A month later he was taken to Galway for Weld's favourite two-year-old race and in beating Rock Of Cashel he secured a never-previously-matched 10-length win in the GPT European Breeders Fund Maiden.

With racecourse confirmation that Grey Swallow was as good on the racetrack as on the home gallops Weld took great care not to risk him him on ground that was too fast for him and in consequence he missed out on all the Group One events in Europe and did not make a second appearance until the last Monday in October when he beat Newton by eight lengths.

Now he comes up against John Oxx's unbeaten Azamour who would prefer drier ground and Aidan O'Brien's Meath who won his maiden at Cork by half a dozen lengths and who was Yeats' galloping companion after racing at the Curragh last month. Neither of these though should test Grey Swallow.

As for Yeats he, too, will make his seasonal debut tomorrow when only three rivals have been declared to take him on in the P W McGrath Memorial Ballysax Stakes. He is still at the head of the Epsom Derby market, a position that should not be altered by anything that happens tomorrow.

Listowel stages a two-day meeting this weekend and such is the popularity of this fixture with owners and trainers that despite the action of Horse Racing Ireland in dividing a race each day to make up eight-race programmes, they still finished with a massive 245 ballotted out declarations, enough by my count to fill an additional two days of racing here.

Lady O'Reilly, who continues to enlarge her Irish racing interests, can emerge with a double in the first two races this afternoon made up of the Declan Gillespie-trained Sudden Silence (2.00) and James Burns' Heaven's Help (2.30).

Sudden Silence proved that she had trained on when a hampered and unlucky half-length second to Megec Blis at Leopardstown at the end of last month while Heaven's Help was third at the Curragh last year to Amarula Ridge, who will be taking on Grey Swallow tomorrow.

Both Lady O'Reilly's runners are being ridden by Jamie Spencer who could be aiming at a first Listowel hat-trick as he will also be aboard the fancied Potsdam (3.00).