Irish Flat horses to follow in 2025

The Flat season is now getting up to full speed, with the Guineas Festival at Newmarket in close range and the National Hunt campaign all but done and dusted.

The Tattersalls Irish Guineas Weekend at the Curragh looms in the middle of May and, from there, the season will be at full tilt across the summer months. We've picked out a quintet of Irish-based Flat horses that may be worth keeping tabs on in 2025.

Acapulco Bay (Aidan O'Brien)

The Ballydoyle team will always demand high attention in any list of horses to watch and Dubawi colt Acapulco Bay fits the bill for the summer ahead.

He scored in a Curragh maiden over a mile on good ground on his second start in August last year and was then second behind stablemate Trinity College at Naas on his seasonal reappearance in March on testing ground, the pair well clear of everything else.

He's got a three-figure rating from that effort and the winner went very close in Epsom's Derby Trial since. Acapulco Bay has entries in York's Dante as well as the English and Irish Derbys and the future looks bright.

Riviera Queen (Jessica Harrington)

Jessica Harrington has high hopes for the daughter of Camelot in the upcoming season. She only bagged a modest Tramore maiden from five starts last season as a three-year-old, but she ran well in the Listed Bluebell Stakes at Naas in the autumn and her season-ending run in the Finale Stakes at the Curragh is readily overlooked.

She holds a Chester Cup entry, where the marathon trip would be something entirely new, but her trainer intends on tackling fillies-only stakes races over a mile-and-a-half and further according to dispatches and we could see further progress this term.

Sovereign Thought (Donnacha O'Brien)

A two-year-old with some promise on paper from the Donnacha O'Brien yard. This colt by Ten Sovereigns out of Be Mindful has winners in his pedigree; he is a half-sister to useful 1m-1m4f winner Vivat Rex, out of 1m/1m1f Listed winning sister to Oaks winner Imagine and half-sister to the Derby winner Generous.

Elizabeth Jane (Dermot Weld)

The great DK Weld perhaps doesn't have the ammunition of days gone by but the Master of Rosewell House can still come up with the goods.

His Dubawi filly Elizabeth Jane was touted as one to follow after winning her only start at two but last season didn't entirely go to plan, despite a very good run in fourth in the Irish Oaks in July at the Curragh.

She did manage to sign off by winning a ten-furlong Listed race on heavy ground at Leopardstown in October and she is still low-mileage. She has done her best work with some cut in the ground but should handle a decent surface and she's pencilled in for a comeback in the Mooresbridge Stakes at the Curragh in May.

Lady With The Lamp (Joseph O'Brien)

This filly was a Listed winner at Dundalk back in October at odds of 66/1, but any notion that might have been a fluke or a flash in the pan was knocked on the head when she won in the same grade at Cork on her comeback at the start of April.

She picked up in good style under Dylan McMonagle at the Mallow venue and her owning group, which includes well-known faces like Kevin Blake and Nick Luck, are already talking about a possible visit to Royal Ascot for the Commonwealth Cup in June.