Skitter Scatter shows fairytale potential

AS Champions Weekend looms ever larger on the horizon the potential for the best weekend’s racing of the year to produce a fairytale story or two looks a distinct possibility at this stage.

At the Curragh on Sunday the underestimated Skitter Scatter defeated much the best field of two-year-old fillies to have been assembled in Ireland this season in the Group 2 Debutante Stakes. This was the biggest success of trainer Patrick Prendergast’s career, while it also signalled that his redoubtable charge has emerged as the forerunner for the Group 1 Moyglare Stud Stakes.

When Skitter Scatter won the Silver Flash Stakes in July much of the focus was on the below par showing of the odds on Goddess, but the former’s display last Sunday was one of real quality. She travelled through the race with notable ease and looked to have the race in safe keeping well over a furlong from home.

The Debutante was also the first time Skitter Scatter has raced on anything other than good to firm ground and she coped splendidly with the ease underfoot to suggest that similar conditions at the Curragh in a fortnight’s time will be no problem.

In a six-race campaign that began at Dundalk all the way back in late March the daughter of Scat Daddy has done nothing but improve with every run and perhaps we shouldn’t be all that surprised with how she has turned out. After all she did manage to fend off Sergei Prokofiev and The Irish River in a Dundalk maiden in April and that pair certainly haven’t let the form down.

A fine and compelling advertisement for the talents of her trainer, Skitter Scatter would unquestionably provide one of the highlights of the season if she were to add the Moyglare to her other successes this term.

It is perhaps a telling pointer to her chances that the only other filly to complete the Silver Flash-Debutante double in the last 14 years was Maybe who duly completed the hat-trick when she lined up in the Moyglare in 2011.