Sruthan can show worth again in Big Bad Bob Gladness Stakes

Ryan Moore

is on duty for Ballydoyle aboard the Group One winner Dick Whittington in Newbury’s Greenham Stakes but it’s like old times at the

Curragh

on Sunday as Joseph O’Brien teams up with his father Aidan for four HQ rides including Due Diligence in the Group

Three feature.

Any incongruity at talking about ‘old times’ in terms of a jockey not yet 22 can be taken in the context of the colossal success O’Brien Jnr has enjoyed at the Curragh in the last three years, including a pair of Derby wins on Camelot and Australia.

A first winner of the season came at Leopardstown during the week and doing 9.5 seems to be sustainable for the time being for the former champion jockey whose book of Curragh rides also includes Geoffrey Chaucer, returning for a first start since last year’s German Derby in the Alleged Stakes.

Sole three-year-old

It is the Big Bad Bob Gladness Stakes which features though, with O’Brien on the Golden Jubilee runner-up Due Diligence and Seamus Heffernan on board the Dewhurst third Smuggler’s Cove, the sole three-year-old in the race.

It is a dozen years since a three-year-old won the Gladness and no horse has ever won it back to back. However, on soft ground, and on his first start of the season, Sruthan could do it. He won this first time out in 2014, also won on his 2013 debut, and connections are in form.

Jim Bolger has a pair of former Group One-winning two-year-olds lining up in the Alleged. Parish Hall won this in 2013, while that year was the last time we saw the former Criterium International winner Loch Garman appear, in the French Derby.

In comparison Dermot Weld’s filly Massinga has a low profile but can successfully manage to drop back from a mile and a half, the distance she won the Noblesse Stakes at Cork earlier this month.

Weld introduces a fascinating newcomer in the three-year-old maiden. Time To Inspire is a half brother to Forgotten Rules and the son of Galileo still holds an Epsom Derby entry. It’s only two years since Ruler Of The World debuted in this maiden and six weeks later landed the ‘blue riband’.

Weld has the Gowran winner Summaya in Navan’s Listed Salsabil Stakes but this could see the regally bred Diamondsandrubies step up from her Tipperary maiden win.