Bean Feasa

Bean Feasa put up a good performance to win the Group 3 Derrinstown Stud 1000 Guineas Trial at Leopardstown on Sunday.

Always travelling well just behind the leader, it appeared that leader Asking was travelling better as they rounded the home turn, and it looked like Jim Bolger’s filly might not get there when the leader kicked at the two-furlong pole. The Godolphin filly appeared to hang to her left a little, in behind the leader, when Kevin Manning asked her for her effort but, once she moved towards the outside of her rival, she picked up nicely and, tongue lolling out, she continued to go forward, staying on all the way to the line to win by two and a half lengths from Asking, with another length and a half back to Shes Ranger in third. She clocked the fastest comparative time of the day, and she was over two seconds faster than the time that Custom Cut clocked in winning the Group 3 Amethyst Stakes run over the same course and distance 35 minutes earlier.

Winless in three runs last season as a juvenile, Bean Feasa finished an encouraging fifth in the hot 1000 Guineas Trial at Leopardstown on her debut this season – the race in which 1000 Guineas heroine Winter was second – but she was beaten on soft ground on her next run at Gowran Park. So it was to her credit that she was able to bounce back as quickly to win this, just a week after her Gowran run. She wasn’t beaten far at Gowran, she finished second, just two and a half lengths behind Naughty Or Nice, and trainer Jim Bolger put that debut defeat down to the soft ground at Gowran Park on the day. Indeed, it was interesting to listen to the trainer’s interview after the Leopardstown race. He said that, after finishing a close second on her racecourse debut last year at Naas, she banged her head in the stalls on her second run back at The Curragh in Rehana’s maiden, and that on her third run she was probably still thinking about that incident.

Left off the track after that third run back in August, she has obviously thrived during the winter, and Sunday’s run was a career-best, her first run in a tongue-tie. A daughter of Speirbhean – who, coincidentally, won the Derrinstown Stud 1000 Leopardstown Guineas Trial in 2001 for Bolger – and therefore a half-sister to Teofilo, she could be a filly for the Irish Guineas, and she could step up to 10 furlongs or even a mile and a half in time.

7^th May 2017