Willie Mullins’s Royal Ascot winner Belloccio is favourite to land Europe’s richest flat handicap at the Curragh this Sunday.
It is the third and final year of the current sponsorship deal for the €600,000 Friends of the Curragh Irish Cesarewitch and officials at HQ are hoping that similarly lucrative backing of the two-mile handicap can continue in future.
An €80,000 race in 2021, the hugely boosted prize was the brainchild of the former Horse Racing Ireland chairman Joe Keeling and can have a maximum of 30 runners, all rated no higher than 110.
Aidan O’Brien’s Waterville won the inaugural running in 2022 with a ‘ride of the year’ performance from jockey Wayne Lordan, while Joseph O’Brien sprang a 150-1 shock through Magellan Strait last season.
Both O’Briens are heavily represented towards the top of ante-post betting lists, although it is Belloccio, an impressive winner of Ascot’s Copper Horse Handicap last June, who is a general 8-1 favourite. He is also the same price for next month’s English Cesarewitch at Newmarket.
The staying test is part of a massively valuable Autumn Weekend programme at the Curragh where Europe’s richest two-year-old race, the Goffs Million, takes place on Saturday.
Ballydoyle’s unbeaten The Lion In Winter, a €375,000 purchase, and currently favourite for next year’s Guineas and Derby, is expected to line up for the seven-furlong contest restricted to graduates of the last year’s Orby Sale. There is a new €500,000 alternative contest on Saturday for Orby purchases.
“At the moment they are all entered in the one race and on Tuesday [next acceptance stage] trainers have to decide what race they are going for,” said the Curragh’s chief executive Brian Kavanagh on Sunday.
Kavanagh said the Cesarewitch sponsorship will be reviewed after the coming weekend’s action and added: “We will sit down after the race, talk to the sponsors and see. It was always a three-year sponsorship, and we are always looking to grow and develop.”
Ryan Moore will be on familiar ground at the Curragh at the weekend, but before that the Englishman, widely regarded as the world’s top jockey, will make a first visit to the Listowel festival on Tuesday.
The regally-bred Mundi is one of four Ballydoyle rides Moore has been pencilled in for on his first trip to ‘the Kingdom’.
Listowel hosts a flat card on Monday too, where terrestrial coverage of the festival begins for the week on TG4.
The feature is a €45,000 handicap, although Young Churchill could be worth examining in the following maiden on the back of his third to Fighter and Ard Na Mara last time.
There is Listed action at Fairyhouse on Monday with the Ballyhane Blenheim Stakes, where the cross-channel raider Itsatenfromlen takes his chance in a 10-runner field.
Two out of two on his French visits to Chantilly, Amy Murphy’s charge faces some talented locals, including the most inexperienced in the race, One Smack Mac.
Ger Lyons’s colt won impressively on his sole start to date at Naas and must overcome a wide draw. However, his trainer has won the Blenheim twice in the last three years.
In other news, Jesscia Harrington’s Trevaunance could finish only fourth behind Godolphin’s Rebel’s Romance in Sunday’s Preis Von Europa in Cologne.
Europe’s sole Group One of the weekend saw the Irish mare cut out much of the running only to fade as William Buick got Rebel’s Romance home by a neck to repeat his 2022 success in the race.
“It’s great to be back on Rebel’s Romance winning this race for the second time. He’s a real international superstar and today he showed what a tough horse he is,” Buick told local media.
“When we come to Germany, we always respect the local horses, it’s never easy, but I thought everything today went very well for him. The track was in good condition and we’re all very happy.
“The pace was pretty slow and he’s a horse who gets in his comfort zone; he would have been better off a stronger pace, but he’s a high-class horse and he knows how to win. He always finds enough, he always finds a way, and he’s an admirable horse. He’s a great horse,” he added.
It was a sixth career top-flight success for Rebel’s Romance.
