The Spigot Lodge handler enjoyed a double on day one of the Irish Champions Festival at Leopardstown on Saturday courtesy of Convergent and Fallen Angel and his latest representative was a heavily-supported 5-4 favourite on the back of an impressive debut at Leicester last month.<\/p>\n
Always up with the pace in the hands of Clifford Lee, Alparslan came under pressure with over a furlong still to run, but the further he went the better he looked and he passed the post with three and a half lengths in hand over Magny Cours.<\/p>\n
Burke said: \u201cI\u2019m delighted with him, he\u2019s a lovely colt.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe purposely left him for this race after he won his maiden. He\u2019d improved a lot on that and we\u2019ll obviously throw him into black-type races now and see how high we can take him.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s workmanlike at home, he\u2019s not a speed horse, so you never know until you get those horses on the track exactly what they\u2019ve got under the bonnet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paddy Power make Alparslan a 20-1 shot for next year\u2019s 2000 Guineas, while he is 8-1 from 25-1 for the Dewhurst – but Burke suggested he could set his sights a little lower.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cI\u2019ll have to discuss it with Mohamed (Saeed Al Shehhi, owner) but I\u2019d say he\u2019ll go for a Listed race somewhere, or maybe the Horris Hill at Newbury might be a nice race for him as he obviously handles a bit of cut in the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tango Flare was a 50-1 winner of the Irish Stallion Farms EBF Bold Lad Sprint Handicap for trainer Pat Foley and jockey Luke McAteer, while the concluding Irish Stallion Farms EBF Northfields Handicap went the way of Johnny Murtagh’s 11-2 shot Shaool, ridden by Ben Coen.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Jessica Harrington\u2019s Barnavara led from pillar to post to land the Moyglare \u201cJewels\u201d Blandford Stakes.<\/p>\n
A winner at Listed and Group Three level in June, the three-year-old was last seen finishing third behind the reopposing 11-8 favourite Red Letter in the Group Three Snow Fairy Fillies Stakes at this venue a fortnight ago.<\/p>\n
But stepping back up to a mile and a quarter, Barnavara (6-1) was soon bowling along in front in the hands of Shane Foley and having had the chasing pack in trouble from halfway up the straight, she kept pouring it on to score by three and a half lengths from One Look, with Red Letter back in third.<\/p>\n
Harrington said: \u201cShe\u2019s a fantastic filly and is improving all the time. She\u2019s a big filly and with each race she gets better and better.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought Hotazhell would run well yesterday and he did (fourth in Irish Champion Stakes), but she was my best chance because of her form and I thought every bit of rain was going to help her, because she will go on softer ground.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019ll go to Paris on Arc weekend for the Prix de l\u2019Opera – she has to go there now. She\u2019s won a Listed race, a Group Three and a Group Two, so a Group One is the natural way to go.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Spigot Lodge handler enjoyed a double on day one of the Irish Champions Festival at Leopardstown on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137324,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[3004,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-137323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-racing","tag-racing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}