THE EXCITING favourite for next year’s 2,000 Guineas, Strong Suit, could be on course to try and maintain his unbeaten record in next month’s Phoenix Stakes at the Curragh.
Richard Hannon’s colt overcame a far from clear passage to win the Coventry Stakes at Royal Ascot and is set for a busy August with both the Phoenix and Deauville’s Prix Morny under consideration. “It’s a toss up between the Morny (August 22nd) and the Phoenix (August 8th) but there’s a chance you could do the two,” Richard Hannon Jnr said yesterday. “There are two weeks between them and he hasn’t had too much racing.”
Fasliyev in 1999 won both the Phoenix and the Morny having previously scored in the Coventry and the Hannon team reckon Strong Suit to be a top class candidate who is already as low as 4 to 1 favourite for next year’s Newmarket Guineas.
Tonight’s all-National Hunt card at Roscommon could see Impersonator in with a decent chance of winning his first race since late 2008 in the Opportunity Handicap Hurdle.
He is on a decent mark in this two mile contest and looked to be suited by the quicker ground when a reasonable fourth behind Directa King in a flat race at Limerick last month.
First Beauty chased home Leblon in a decent race at Listowel last time and previous to that had scored at Limerick, a balance of form that gives Dessie Hughes’s runner a leading shout in the novice hurdle. Takeyourcapoff could finish only sixth last time out but ran well at Killarney before that and looks a leading contender for the Ladies bumper.
