Phoenix Stakes Curragh

Power 7/4

Lilbourne Lad 5/2

Frederick Engels 4/1

Reply 6/1

Tough As Nails  9/1

Gatepost 9/1

Qatar's Pearl  16/1

Parish Hall 25/1

After 25/1

La Collina 25/1

Boris Grigorie 33/1

Somasach 40/1

Among Equals 50/1

Homecoming Queen 100/1

POWER has been installed the 7-4 favourite by Paddy Power to give Aidan O'Brien yet another winner in the Group 1 Keeneland Phoenix Stakes at the Curragh on Sunday.

O'Brien has a stranglehold on the 6f race, winning 11 of the last 13 runnings, and unbeaten Coventry Stakes winner Power heads six Ballydoyle entries for the race at the latest forfeit stage on Tuesday.

Next best in the market is Richard Hannon's Lilbourne Lad at 5-2, as a total of 14 horses were left in the race.



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Phoenix Stakes card 
Hannon's juvenile, who has won three times from four starts, landed the Railway Stakes on his last visit to the track in June from Michael Mulvany's Tough As Nails, who was also left in.

Other notable entries include the David Brown-trained Frederick Engels.

The Windsor Castle Stakes hero also landed the July Stakes at Newmarket and is one of three British possibles with Mick Channon's Coventry Stakes fifth Gatepost also still entered.

Mark Johnston's Princely Heir was the last British-trained winner of the race in 1997.

The ground at the Curragh was described as good on Tuesday with a mixed weather forecast expected for the rest of the week.

Keeneland Phoenix Stakes

Paddy Power: 7-4 Power, 5-2 Lilbourne Lad, 4 Frederick Engels, 6 Reply, 9 Gatepost, Tough As Nails, 16 Qatar's Pearl, 25 Parish Hall, After, La Collina 33-1 bar

If the ground remains good or faster on Sunday I think that Frederick Engels will take all the beating and he is undoubtedly the value at 4/1.  It's never easy taking on the best Irish colts on their own turf, but Frederick Engels beat Roman Soldier more easily in the July Stakes than Power had managed to do in the Coventry Stakes and he brings just about the best form to this race.  The last six winners of the Coventry Stakes to have run in the Phoenix Stakes (Strong Suit, Art Connoisseur, Henrythenavigator, Hellvelyn, Red Clubs and Three Valleys) have all been beaten and Power will need to improve on his narrow Coventry victory to take a hand in this.

Reply could still run in this race.

He be a major contender for me if he ran. Mind you Power should follow up if he Reply doesn't run. The English have a strong bunch coming over. I wonder if COD will ride him. God i hope so.

It's asking an awful lot of the horse to jump straight from winning a maiden to running in a Group 1 race, especially after a 10-week lay-off.

Didn't Kingsfort do it ?

His maiden victory was incredibly impressive to me.

Obviously as you state massive negatives as-well but i would not dismiss him if he ran. Should be a very good race with Gatepost, FE and LL running. Best race 2yr old race by a country mile this year so far.

Kingsfort won the National Stakes, straight from a maiden.

True Sint and those Maiden race while not vintage HQ maiden's have worked out better than average.

Requinto proving only last week that he is a Group 3 class sprinter.

It's true that once-raced maiden winners Kingsfort and Chabal fought out the finish of the six-runner National Stakes in 2009, but I think it's fair to say that it was a Group 1 in name only, with only third-placed Beethoven susequently making any sort of mark in Group 1 company (winner of a sub-standard Dewhurst but thereafter nowhere near Group 1 class).  In his favour, though, Reply was an impressive winner of his maiden and is bred to excel at this 6f trip.

Is Freddy a definite runner? I've taken some 9/2 as think this is far too big. I respect Power but I'd make Fred favourite tbh...

Power is bet of the weekend for me steering job [;)]

no betting on a group 1 on here, anyone know the final decs

http://horses.sportinglife.com/Racecards/0,12495,451665,00.html

aobballydoyle
We are declaring 3 to run in the Keenland Phoenix Stakes at the Curragh on Sunday. Power (Seamus), After (Colm) and Reply (Joseph)

Gatepost was a serious eyecatcher at Ascot!!!! small field will suit him down to the ground
will be a typical Spencer last to first job

I must be missing something here??? You have to respect an obrien runner but how is it favourite over frederick engles? if he was trainged by obrien he would be around the 6-4 mark surely? i personally mark him up at around 5-2 but with the overbetting on obriens horses especially unbeaten talking horses it would imo be around teh 6-4 mark. Certain people dont like backing ew especially as youll lose a bit on the place as gone 7-2 with my firm but surely this is a great ew bet how can this not be in the first 3 unless trouble in running? but the way he travels should help his jockey keep him out of trouble (as in the newarket race) and youve got a massive chance of winning i personally think this is one of best bets ive seen in a while.... cue trailing in 7 lengths 5th no excuses lol

carrie1187
06 Aug 11 05:03
Joined:
24 Jun 11
| Topic/replies: 2 | Blogger: carrie1187's blog
I must be missing something here???

Their 2

It's raining very heavily at the mo in Kildare at the mo.

LILBOURNE LAD returns to Ireland to contest his first Group 1 race in Sunday's Keeneland Phoenix Stakes at the Curragh and connections are anticipating a bold show.
A winner of a Listed race at Naas in June, the Andrew Russell-owned Lilbourne Lad collected the Group 2 Railway Stakes on his last start and can be backed at 9-2 with Coral for the Phoenix Stakes.
Royal Ascot winners Power (2-1) and Frederick Engels (11-4) head him in the betting, but assistant trainer Richard Hannon jnr is optimistic he can give the yard a boost following the retirement of stable star Canford Cliffs this week.

He told his father's website: "He keeps on surprising us and seems to be getting better and better. His Railway Stakes form looks solid, and, while it is a hot race, he deserves to have a shot at the big boys."

Victory for Lilbourne Lad would be the first win for Britain since Princely Heir scored for Mark Johnston in 1997

David Brown has Frederick Engels primed to strike in Phoenix Stakes

The trainer believes his Royal Ascot winner can win the Group One race at the Curragh and distribute some wealth
Chris Cook

Friday was the 116th anniversary of the death of Friedrich Engels, the German industrialist who threw his support behind Karl Marx, helping him to produce the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital. On Sunday, Frederick Engels, the highly successful two-year-old colt, will make his latest attempt to redistribute the wealth of bookmakers among punters when he lines up against Aidan O'Brien's runner Power for the Group One Phoenix Stakes in Ireland.

Engels the lefty theorist enjoyed a spot of fox-hunting, so it is tempting to believe that he would have been delighted to see his name carried by such a talented thoroughbred. David Brown, the horse's 67-year-old trainer who has held a licence for just four years, calls him "a monster" and believes he is a live contender for next year's 2,000 Guineas.

"He's a really powerful individual, with all the markings of being a goliath," Brown says. "That's the way he comes over, that he's got much more to give us and that we've just seen the tip of the iceberg. He's improving all the time."

Frederick Engels owes his name to his first owner, Howard Wilson, who describes himself as an international socialist. A Yorkshire miner during the strike of the early 1980s, he now runs racehorse ownership syndicates under the title of Norton Common Farm.

"I name all of my horses after workers in struggle," he says and is particularly proud of Bertiewhittle, who commemorates a Doncaster miner and union activist. Whittle's obituary in the Socialist Worker claimed he was "the first man bloodied at the Battle of Orgreave".

"I didn't name Frederick Engels until two weeks before he ran. I purposely wanted to give him a fabulous name and that's what I'm doing from now on." Wilson has been in touch with the racing authorities to reserve "Karl Marx", which he plans to bestow upon "a horse that can come up to the standard of the name".

It is just possible that Engels the idealist might not have approved of Wilson's pragmatism in selling the best horse he has owned when a six-figure sum was offered by Sheikh Fahad of the Qatari royal family. Wilson himself comes close to admitting his regret at the deal, which was reached after Frederick Engels' first success, just days before he won at Royal Ascot.

"When you've owned a horse like him and then he goes and wins at Ascot for someone else, it's hard to take in," says Wilson, the regret audible in his voice. "But I've been around this game long enough to know that you take a profit and, at the end of the day, I got a very good price for him at that point in time." He paid just £12,000 for the colt last year.

Wilson's relationship with Brown came to an end on the day after Frederick Engels' Ascot win, the owner taking his remaining horses elsewhere. Unsurprisingly, the two men offer differing accounts of the reasons for the separation but it is Brown who is left with custody of the horse that matters most, as well as a new association with a very rich and powerful owner from whom he hopes to get more runners. Sipping coffee at Averham Park stables near Newark, Brown recalls discussing with Sheikh Fahad's agent the question of whether the newly sold Frederick Engels might go to another trainer, perhaps one with a higher profile. "Why would we move him?" he was told.

"But obviously, he couldn't give any guarantees, I didn't expect any. It's just a matter of carrying on and doing the job. Whatever we're doing with him must be somewhere near right. So hopefully that relationship will flourish."

It is an extraordinary position for Brown to find himself in, four years after he sold the engineering business he and a friend had built up from scratch over 40 years, netting himself a fortune which he and his wife, Sandra, then began to spend. "We had a place in Spain, would mess about with the boat and all that lot. That's all right but it's not enough really."

Instead, Brown decided to make a full-time pursuit of his enthusiasm for horses, which have been a part of his background since he spent his teenage years as a stable lad at racing stables including that of Dick Hern. While working, he had owned good horses with several trainers and enjoyed some success with point-to-pointers.

"I just love it, I love the game. Yes, we're busy but it's not busy like when I used to be office-bound." One of Brown's bigger jobs appears to be keeping Frederick Engels fed. "When I go in the barn at 11pm at night to have a look round, the one horse that's always calling for food is him, the minute I go in, and I end up always giving him another scoop. It really makes you feel bad if you don't give him something because he's up and down the box, bucking and screaming his head off."

At other times, the horse appears unusually relaxed. Brown has found him lying on the floor of his box so often that he initially feared there must be something wrong with him.

A recent biography painted Engels as a man of outsize appetites, who once recorded his motto as "take it easy". Frederick Engels the horse may have been better named than anyone could have guessed.

10/1 looks good value for reply.

Lashing rain tonight in Kildare.

There are a few a bit too closely matched here for my liking, but I agree that Reply isn't out of it. His maiden win was run in a pretty fast time and I have him only 5lbs behind the front two in the betting, he should also be fresher than a lot of these.

how long has the rain been coming down anag? most of the night?

The forecast last night was for occasional showers but for it to remain mainly dry.  If the Curragh misses the scattered heavy showers today the going is likely to remain good.

http://www.attheraces.com/article.aspx?hlid=518227&lid=pa+racing+feed&raceid...