HOLD the front page! Hold a good few pages, in fact. Emily Upjohn isn’t running in the Irish Oaks. There was a bit of helter skelter in The Irish Field offices yesterday but we’re all good and the show goes on.

A bird strike to the plane due to carry John and Thady Gosden’s filly from Stansted to Dublin yesterday meant nobody was going anywhere. The Curragh’s loss is Ascot’s gain, because she now goes for the King George next Saturday and provides a welcome boost to that Group 1 after news that Desert Crown would miss the race came through this week.

The episode was a blow to everyone connected with the Irish Oaks and those going to the Curragh today, but you’d forgive the trainers of the opposing fillies for arriving on the racecourse with an extra pep in their step. What looked an arduous task now looks significantly more manageable.

Most notably for Magical Lagoon, now the 5/4 favourite, giving a golden opportunity of a second classic win for Jessica Harrington after Alpha Centauri’s Irish 1000 Guineas in 2018.

“Well, she still has to go and perform and run to her best,” Harrington replied, when I put that sentiment to her yesterday afternoon, perhaps exposing a naive view. “Nothing comes easy and you still have to go and run to your best so we’ll just see how it goes. We’re happy with her. She was brilliant in the Ribblesdale and this was always the route we had planned for her. I always felt that the pattern of going to Ascot and then on to this race would work well for her.”

Harrington also runs the maiden Fennela, who has plenty to do but is in an even better position to pick up some prize money now.

“She is stepping up in class obviously, but she is in good form and we’ll see how she gets on.”

You make your own luck, as they say. Ger Lyons is another trainer who has worked back from the Irish Oaks for his filly Cairde Go Deo, and she has gone from 16/1 to 6/1.

Lyons won the race two seasons ago with a similarly lightly campaigned filly in Even So. Cairde Go Deo, meaning friends forever in Irish, has done little wrong since finishing third to Concert Hall and Magical Lagoon in the Salsabil Stakes at Navan, winning twice, and the form of her latest success was boosted significantly by Boundless Ocean, who was a good winner of the Meld Stakes at Leopardstown on Thursday.

Elsewhere, the Sapphire Stakes may not be the strongest renewal but is intriguing through Mooniesta, going for a second win in a row in the race, and the returning Castle Star, who presumably had some sort of setback to keep him off the track until now. Fourth in the Group 1 Phoenix Stakes here over today’s course and distance, he then finished just a half-length away from Perfect Power in the Middle Park, form which looks quite sharp now.

PEREGRINE Run has been a fabulous servant to Peter Fahey and owner Vincent Byrne with no less than 18 career wins, but he could still land his biggest ever pot today in the Unibet Summer Plate (3.14) at Market Rasen.

The 12-year-old has been in good form, having finished third in the Mayo National and filled that position again in a valuable handicap chase at Cartmel on his latest run. With Britain also set to come under a heatwave this weekend, he should get the fast ground conditions he craves.

Fahey, who has already had a signature handicap succes in Britain this year after Suprise Package’s bolt-up win in the Imperial Cup, felt his grand servant had every change of adding to his illustrious CV when he spoke earlier in the week.

“Peregrine Run came out of his last race at Cartmel very well and it looks like he’s going to have good ground at the weekend,” he said.

“His two runs this season were good ones in two competitive races and the ground went completely against us at Cartmel. We weren’t beaten a long way in the end and I feel we could definitely have been a lot closer if the rain hadn’t have come just before racing.

“The better the ground, the better for him. There are not many horses who have won 18 races and he has won under all of the codes - he’s won on the flat, over hurdles and over fences.

“He’s a lovely horse and he has been a huge horse for the yard. My wife rides him out and does all the work on him and Paul who leads him up both love him and everyone follows him. It’s great that he’s still enjoying it as he has still got as much enthusiasm as he did as a five year old.”

Irish representation in the race is doubled by the inclusion of Jessica Harrington’s Rapid Response, who Sean O’Keeffe travels over to ride. A winner at the Punchestown Festival last year, the eight-year-old mare ran okay behind useful mares Say Goodbye and Gin On Lime at Limerick on her previous run, her second after a long break, and may be coming nicely to the boil now. Notably, her mark in Britain is the same as her Irish assessment.