Aidan O'Brien will pursue a grand slam of Group One juvenile races in France when he sends both Mount Nelson and Yellowstone to run in tomorrow's Criterium International at Saint-Cloud.
Séamus Heffernan maintains his association with the apparent first string, Mount Nelson, an impressive winner of a maiden at the Curragh on Monday, after which Heffernan described the Rock Of Gibraltar colt as being among the top "four or five" in the juvenile team at Ballydoyle.
Colm O'Donoghue will be on board Yellowstone, only seventh to Teofilo in the Futurity but a Cork winner on his debut, and the Irish horses will face a stiff test against nine opponents that include the Andre Fabre-trained, Christophe Soumillon-ridden Fristen Forest.
The mile event has thrown up some top class winners in recent years with Bago scoring in 2003 and Dalakhani holding off O'Brien's Chevalier by a neck the year before.
That's the closest the Irish trainer has come to winning the race and adding to an astounding record in the Group One French two-year-old races that includes a remarkable seven victories in the Prix Jean Luc Lagadere.
O'Brien has already won the 10-furlong Criterium de Saint-Cloud twice and picked up the Prix Morny on three occasions while Rumplestiltskin was successful in last year's Prix Marcel Boussac.
On the other side of the world, Ballydoyle's number one jockey Kieren Fallon continues the build-up to Tuesday week's Melbourne Cup attempt by Yeats and was in action overnight in the Tattersalls Cox Plate at Moonee Valley. Fallon has already stated he believes Yeats to be the best European-trained horse sent to Australia for the Cup but that is a view not completely shared by the jockey probably best placed of all to know.
Michael Kinane was the man on board Vintage Crop for that horse's momentous Melbourne Cup success in 1993 and he has also ridden Yeats to win this year's Goodwood Cup.
He told a number of Australian newspapers: "Vintage Crop was a very good horse. He (Yeats) would be a better stayer but possibly isn't a quicker horse."
Kinane also emphasised the scale of the task facing O'Brien's first runner in Australia and said: "A horse capable of winning a Melbourne Cup is hard to find. You're got to have a special horse. Yeats is a high-class stayer but he has plenty of weight. If he is at his best, he has a chance undoubtedly.
"The travel is the big thing but he is reasonably fresh. He has only had three races this year. If the conditions are not too firm, he is very capable of carrying the weight and shaking the race up."
