CURRAGH REPORT:IT'S NOT often a multi-million euro Classic winner gets beaten in a mere Listed race, and even more unusual for his trainer to appear less than anxious at the result, but Aidan O'Brien was in reassuring mode after Fame And Glory's shock defeat at the Curragh yesterday.

“I wouldn’t be disappointed by that. We’re only starting off with him and it is tough going out there, very tacky ground,” the champion trainer said after his Irish Derby winner managed only third to She’s Our Mark in the Alleged Stakes.

O’Brien’s first winner of 2010 only came at Dundalk on Friday evening and generally many of the hugely-powerful Ballydoyle string have needed their first starts of the campaign in a big way.

Fame And Glory looked to follow the pattern yesterday, travelling well under Johnny Murtagh to the furlong marker before fading quickly as the winner pounced late to beat Popmurphy by a length with the 2 to 5 favourite another two lengths back in third. For a horse that came closer than most to getting Sea The Stars even near his maximum last season it was at the very least an anti-climatic start to a four-year-old campaign but if O’Brien was putting on a face of unconcern afterwards it was a very convincing one.

“The plan before today was to think about the Prix Ganay after this so we will take him home and see how forward he is,” he said.

“Don’t be disappointed. It was tough going up there and he may still go to France.”

Another Ballydoyle four-year- old, Age Of Aquarius, is set to reappear in the Mooresbridge Stakes later in the month and that’s also the next stop for She’s Our Mark who provided jockey Danny Grant with a memorable success on his first day back from a one-month drugs ban.

The 31-year-old rider returned a positive test for cocaine last winter but five months of a six-month suspension were suspended as the Turf Club decided the positive test was accidental due to Grant’s use of medication for a long-standing eczema problem.

“I actually think this mare is better than ever,” said She’s Our Mark’s trainer Pat Flynn.

“They actually weren’t going half fast enough for her and she was always tanking.”

Out of luck on Fame And Glory, Murtagh still managed to win yesterday’s feature event, the Group Three Gladness Stakes, on Kargali who came from the unlikely source of Luke Comer, the Co Meath-based trainer and property developer.

Comer has invested heavily in horses out of high-profile yards and won the Curragh Cup with the ex-Aidan O’Brien-trained Chimes At Midnight in 2001.

Kargali was bought out of John Oxx’s stable and ironically it was Oxx that supplied the beaten favourite, Rayeni, who came up three-quarters of a length short after the pair came close together inside the final furlong.

“Our horse was a bit over-keen and it cost him on that sticky ground. He just got a little tired,” Oxx said. “But Kargali is not a bad horse and got to a mark of 110 for us at one stage.”

Comer’s representative, Paul Kinane, said: “The other horse blew up. If he was right we wouldn’t have beaten him.

“But we have turned a corner with our horse and now we’ll just try to keep him sound.”

Oxx had earlier seen Keredari make most of the running in the Loughbrown Stakes under Fran Berry and the Oasis Dream colt will take his chance in the Irish Guineas next month.

“If I have anything that might shake them up as a three-year-old he’s the only one. We have no lofty ambitions this year but he’s a type that might run into a place in the Guineas. “He is adaptable in terms of ground,” Oxx said.

Last year’s Phoenix Stakes winner Alfred Nobel never showed to challenge but Aidan O’Brien reported: “He’s a fast horse and will go back in trip. Stravinsky got beat in the Loughbrown, and with no penalty.” Despite his two Group One winners getting beaten yesterday, O’Brien still left the Curragh with a first and last race double, Rocket Man switching to the inside in the concluding maiden to win impressively while Samuel Morse, the Ballydoyle second string in the juvenile maiden, also secured a run up the inner to make a winning debut for Seamus Heffernan.

“He’s a fine big horse who had never been on grass before and got a lovely split,” O’Brien said of the two-year-old.

One trainer who has hit the ground running in the early stages of the flat season is Paul Deegan who was runner-up in the Alleged with Potmurphy but still ended up with a 51 to 1 double courtesy of the impressive Daffodil Walk in the six-furlong handicap and Celtic Soprano in the mile-and-a-half handicap.

“She’s an absolute superstar, I love her to bits,” Deegan said of Celtic Soprano. “I think she has improved again over the winter and we’ll try and get her some black type now in the Vintage Crop Stakes.”

• The superstar chaser Denman will wind up his season at Punchestown after being ruled out of this weekend's Scottish Grand National at Ayr. The 2008 Cheltenham Gold Cup winner, and a blue riband runner-up for the last two years, had been due to carry topweight at Ayr but his trainer Paul Nicholls said last evening: "Even if Ayr water, the ground is not going to be right for him so we have decided to make an early decision." The news is a major boost to Punchestown where Denman will line up in Wednesday week's Guinness Gold Cup under the Grand National winning rider Tony McCoy.