Aidan O'Brien trains eight of the 17 confirmed for the Dewhurst Stakes, with his team headed by the 2,000 Guineas favourite, George Washington, and Derby favourite Horatio Nelson.Fallon is fit to ride the stable's nominated No 1 after returning to action at Windsor yesterday after recovering from dehydration.Opera Cape, runner-up to Horatio Nelson last time, has been declared by Sylvester Kirk, while Marcus Tregoning's Sir Percy may defend his unbeaten record.Four horses have been supplemented for the Champion Stakes. John Oxx's Azamour takes over at the head of the market for the race in which Powerscourt and Bago are also due to represent EuropeThe Coolmore team still have plenty of firepower with which to contest the loftiest races, starting with Champions' Day at Newmarket on Saturday. The son of Montjeu will not race again this season but remains in training next year.Hurricane Run, winner of six of his seven starts, had been 2-1 favourite for the Turf on 29 October. His defection from the Turf race over a mile and a half leaves the Derby winner, Motivator, who was announced a Breeders' Cup contender only on Sunday, with a far better opportunity of ending his racing career on the highest note. The Andr?abre-trained Hurricane Run, bought by Coolmore just before his victory in the Irish Derby, steamed home under a fine ride from Kieren Fallon in the Longchamp showpiece."Hurricane Run coughed last Friday and again over the weekend," Fabre said. It makes a horse more clever.""It's something different - away from the humdrum of the same races all over again - and it's always great to get out there and see the thing up front and close."Elegant Lord was a milestone in Bolger's career. When he won the 1996 Foxhunters' at Cheltenham it broke a wicked Festival spell for his jockey.

"I'd never jumped the last fence there before," he says.JP McManus's gelding was the only winning favourite at the meeting. "JP was in the trenches that week," Bolger adds, "and for JP the trenches would be fairly bad."McManus remains a key figure in Bolger's operation and owns 20 of the 26 horses that pop around Bruree.. The European team hoping to avoid humiliation by the Americans in the Breeders' Cup lost its flagbearer last night after it emerged that Hurricane Run, the brilliant winner of the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe, will miss the meeting at Belmont Park. "They have to move differently and get their brains switched on. "He's an old horse but he minds himself well."Banks racing is Jeux sans Fronti?s for horses, in which the attributes of speed and stamina are not enough as banks, walls and a variety obstacles have to be cleared Contestants also have to possess quickness of foot and mind. Now he has to set it all off again next month as old age and young wolves close in "Maybe he's like wine," Bolger says. The gelding won the first cross-country race ever staged at the Festival in March, a victory which completed a seasonal hat-trick over the Sporting Index-sponsored course.

Spot Thedifference surged along nicely, but it was only when he leaped on and off the mounds at Bolger's bespoke working grounds that his true talent was obvious. He was as agile and foot-perfect as a city cat on its way back over the roofs for supper. Spot Thedifference is rising 13 and may not be the animal which has compiled a formidable contemporary record over the Cheltenham version of racing's obstacle courses. The trailblazers were out under filthy skies at Bruree stables in Co Limerick yesterday. Enda Bolger, the nonpareil training talent of banks racing in Europe, and therefore the globe, watched from aboard his chestnut hack Tipper as his current glorious confederate came nimbly up the gallops. Smith was the first player chosen in this year's collegiate draft following a stellar career at the University of Utah.