Lavery hoping for big show from Poddle on Dundalk debut

Dundalk stages Ireland’s only Fast-Track Qualifier of this season’s All-Weather Championships on Friday with a full field of 14 declared for the Irish Stallion Farms EBF Cooley Fillies Stakes.

The winner of the mile Listed contest will be guaranteed a start in the £150,000 Coral All-Weather Fillies & Mares Championships at Newcastle on Finals Day.

Oodnadatta has competed at Pattern level throughout much of her career for Jessica Harrington, including an excellent third in last season’s G1 Moyglare Stud Stakes, and sets the standard with a rating of 103.

The daughter of Australia was third in the Listed Garnet Stakes at Naas on October 17th and reopposes five fillies from that race, including the fifth Moddy Poddle and sixth Neptune Rock.

Moddy Poddle has been a revelation this season for Sheila Lavery, reeling off a hat-trick of wins at Gowran Park, Galway and Killarney before finishing second in the Irish Cambridgeshire at the Curragh in late August.

Prior to her run in the Garnet Stakes, Moddy Poddle was sixth in a Group 3 contest over an extended nine furlongs at Gowran Park on September 18th.

Lavery said: “Moddy Poddle is in very good form. It will be her first run at Dundalk, but I expect her to handle the surface really well.

“We liked her a lot as a two-year-old, although she was very backward and weak. When they are like that, you can never be sure how much improvement is there, but she has kept stepping up and I don’t know if we have reached the ceiling yet.

“I think the [yielding] ground caught her out on her last couple of starts, so I’d be very hopeful of a big run back on a faster surface.”

Surrounding is making her fifth straight appearance in the race for Mick Halford. The eight-year-old landed the spoils in both 2018 and 2019 and finished second behind British raider Ummalnar 12 months ago. She was also fourth in 2017.

Neptune Rock’s trainer Joseph O’Brien has five runners in total, with his team completed by course and distance scorer River Eden, Lovely Esteem, So I Told You and Dilawara.

His brother Donnacha saddles April Showers, who was second in the Group 2 Kilboy Estate Stakes earlier in the campaign, while his father Aidan runs maiden winners Awhile and Friendly.

The 14 runners are completed by the Ger Lyons-trained Marbling, who captured a handicap at Dundalk last month, Punchestown handicap scorer My Holy Fox and Secret Pulse.