Saturday gives us eight meetings, 56 races and somewhere around 478 runners as things stand. The Curragh has the day's showpiece, the Group 1 Juddmonte Irish Oaks at 4:35, and that is where our nap lands. But there is a lot to get through before then, and one or two of these are considerably more interesting than the prices suggest.
What follows is not a full card-by-card. It is the ten races we actually have an opinion on, in time order, and we say plainly which ones are bets, which ones are watching briefs, and which ones we simply expect to win.
1:10 Curragh: Anchor Road, and this is not a bet
The Juddmonte Lead Artist Irish EBF (C & G) Maiden is a 7f two-year-old maiden worth £12,804 with just six runners, and we want to talk about Anchor Road (G M Lyons, Colin Keane). He is our top rated, and he is the only horse in the race who has ever seen a racecourse. The other five are all newcomers, and three of those five are Aidan O'Brien's, with Ryan Moore booked for Speakers Corner.
So why are we interested? Because of what his one run has turned into. Anchor Road was fifth on debut in the Keadeen Hotel Irish EBF Maiden at the Curragh on 26 June, and he was very unlucky indeed. More to the point, look at what finished in front of him. The winner was Abraham Lincoln, who has since gone to Newmarket and finished second in the Superlative. The runner-up was Haffner, who has since gone to Newmarket and won his maiden. That form has been franked twice over, and Anchor Road was beaten by both of them while getting no sort of run.
He is the one we are most looking forward to. We are not putting him up as a bet, because a short price about a horse taking on three O'Brien newcomers is not where we want our money. But if something beats Anchor Road here, that something is worth writing down.
1:35 Market Rasen: Loriko, and a small gripe about the prize money
The Betway Free Bet Club Novices' Hurdle is 2m4f139y, Class 4, six runners, and worth £5,446. We are looking forward to seeing Loriko (Dan Skelton) back out. He is our top rated, ahead of Gordon Elliott's Master Haku, and we think he is going to be a rather good hurdler for that yard. They have already got a couple of wins into him.
Our gripe is a familiar one. This is a £5,446 novice hurdle. Loriko is rated 121 on our reading of it, and if he goes and beats Master Haku here he risks going up for the privilege of winning five and a half grand. We would rather they looked after his handicap mark. It is not a race we are jumping to get involved in unless he is a significantly bigger price than we expect.