Stars set to miss Irish Derby

John Oxx accepts it is "very hard to see" Sea The Stars running in Sunday's Dubai Duty Free Irish Derby.The Currabeg handler made the announcement after the ground at the Curragh turned soft as the rain fell during Friday evening's card.Sea The Stars, brilliant winner of the 2000 Guineas and the Epsom Derby, is now likely to take his chance in the Coral-Eclipse at Sandown next weekend instead."It's very hard to see how he could run," said Oxx. "The plan had been to wait as long as possible, but I can't see it."We've had quite a bit of rain earlier on Friday morning which we weren't really expecting. We haven't really had any drying weather, and just before racing we had half an hour of rain and it's now soft ground."We live and hope, and we'll delay the decision for a while. But if it's obvious during racing on Saturday that there's no way the ground is going to dry, we'll try and make an earlier announcement."I would have liked to have run him again over a mile and a half, but we'd be very happy to run him in the Eclipse."