Yorkshire Oaks remains the target for Burke and Laurens

KARL BURKE says stable star Laurens will bid to add her Group One tally in the French Oaks next month.
PJ McDonald and Laurens winning the Group One Fillies Mile at Newmarket last year.PJ McDonald and Laurens winning the Group One Fillies Mile at Newmarket last year.
PJ McDonald and Laurens winning the Group One Fillies Mile at Newmarket last year.

PJ McDonald’s mount won her second race at the elite level when landing the Prix Saint-Alary at Paris-Longchamp last Sunday in a hard-fought finish.

Now the Prix de Diane Longines at Chantilly on June 17 – France’s equivalent of the Oaks – is on the agenda for a front-running filly who was second in Newmarket’s 1000 Guineas earlier this month.

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Run over an extended mile and a quarter, the Leyburn trainer will then decide whether owner John Dance’s horse of a lifetime should step up in trip for races like the Yorkshire Oaks and Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.

Burke told The Yorkshire Post that the filly has shown no ill-effects from a race that required great resolution to fend off the persistent challenge of With You.

“She’s arrived back in great condition,” he said. “I am very happy with her.

“She loved it, the ground was perfect, just on the soft side of good.

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“We will know a lot more after the Prix de Diane, whether we step up to a mile and a half or stay at a mile and a quarter.

“The Yorkshire Oaks is very much the plan if we step up and she’s in the Arc at the end of the year.”

Meanwhile, Take Cover is set to head to Ireland for his next race before embarking upon two treble attempts.

Trainer David Griffiths is targeting the Listed Midsummer Sprint Stakes at Naas on June 18 after he shaped well behind Battaash in the Temple Stakes at Haydock on Saturday, on his first start since winning at Dundalk in October.

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After that, the plan is for Take Cover to go for the City Walls Stakes at York on July 14, which he won in 2014 and 2017, and then bid for a third success in the King George Stakes at Glorious Goodwood on August 3. He lifted that Group Two dash in 2014 and 2016.

“He’s had his normal, first-time-out race in the Temple Stakes and wasn’t beaten far. He’s come out of the race fine,” said Bawtry-based Griffiths.

Wild Illusion heads nine runners declared for tomorrow’s Investec Oaks at Epsom.

Fourth in the 1000 Guineas, the task facing trainer Charlie Appleby’s charge – the mount of William Buick – has been made easier by the absence of Aidan O’Brien’s Magical.

Her rivals include Give And Take who won York’s Musidora Stakes, a key trial, for Skipton-born trainer William Haggas and jockey James Doyle.