ALL AT SEA

Johnny Murtagh
(Image : Irish Times)

IRISH CHAMPION STAKES (Gr1)
Leopardstown, Turf, 2012m
8 September 2012

Johnny Murtagh may have felt cast adrift when his long-standing riding contract with the powerful Aga Khan stable was severed last month, but trainer John Oxx has remained staunch to the rider, and has retained him for the mount on Born To Sea (the smart half brother to Galileo, Sea The Stars etc,) for Saturday’s Irish Champion Stakes (Gr.1). It promises to be another grand advert for the quality of European racing this season, as it brings together a string of Group One winners including Nathaniel, Snow Fairy and Aidan O’Brien’s St Nicholas Abbey, who will be looking to avenge his defeat at the hands of the superstar, Frankel, a fortnight ago at York.

The Irish Champion Stakes has thrown up any number of quite exceptional performers over the years, including: Sadler’s Wells (1984), Giant’s Causeway (2000), Fantastic Light (2001) who defeated Galileo, High Chaparral (2003), Oratorio (2005), Dylan Thomas (2006 and 2007), New Approach (2008), Sea The Stars (2009), Cape Blanco (2010) and So You Think (2011). Some honour roll! We have our own “almost-hero” of the same race right here at Summerhill in our new stallion, Traffic Guard, who went down a half length to the world’s top-rated three-year-old of 2008, New Approach, now Europe’s hottest young stallion with his first crop.

CAMELOT REMAINS UNBEATEN WITH IRISH DERBY VICTORY

Click above to watch Camelot winning the Dubai Duty Free Irish Derby…
(Image : Guardian - Footage : RTE Two)

“HEAVY WEIGHT, HEAVY WEATHER”

European racing is in luck at the moment. To have one star of the class of Frankel is a decades-long dream, and to feature an unbeaten Southern Hemisphere champion like Black Caviar in the same season, is the icing on the cake. So what would you call it if you had another “superman” in your midst like Camelot, who remained unbeaten on the weekend when he came home by 2 lengths in the Irish Derby (Gr.1)? His trainer, Aidan O’Brien, was in two minds as to whether to run him in the rain-sodden ground, which left The Curragh as something of a bog, given the horse’s gliding action and the fact he likes it on “top”. Worries about The Curragh’s testing ground aside, the superiority of Camelot was unquestionable prior to yesterday’s Gr.1 Dubai Duty Free Irish Derby, and the brilliant colt overcame the conditions to maintain his perfect sequence.

Sent off as the 1-5 favorite, the Gr.1 2000 Guineas and Investec Derby hero travelled like those odds suggested he would for much of the contest, but, when committed at the quarter pole, instantly had Born To Sea to contend with. Shaking him off soon after as the whip was applied, the bay stretched away to a two-length success. In doing so, he became the first since Nijinsky to win this trio of Classics, and John Magnier confirmed that they want to emulate that great with Triple Crown glory in the Gr.1 St Leger. “I said to Aidan when he came to Ballydolye that there was room for another statue,” Coolmore’s owner said, referring to the monument to Dr Vincent O’Brien’s champion that stands at Rosegreen.

All sorts of records fell in the process, but from the purist’s perspective, it’s enlightening to reflect on a few of the statistical truths that emerged on the back of his 5 length win in the Investec version of the Derby at Epsom earlier this month. Julian Muscat, he of French origins, always seems to find a different angle, and he wrote thus of Camelot’s sire Montjeu, the Coolmore outfit’s dominance, Aidan O’Brien and his 19 year old son, Joseph: “Superlatives do scant justice to the Coolmore syndicate’s dominance of the British turf, and no patron will better appreciate the fact than Her Majesty The Queen. The Investec Epsom Derby (Gr.1) June 2 marked the official start to four days of celebrations commemorating The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. However, if the monarch thought she had seen it all in her 60 years on the throne, she will have to make due revision in light of recent events. In winning the Derby and the Oaks (both Gr.1) respectively, Galileo and Imagine completed the Epsom classic double for Coolmore 11 years ago. That rare distinction was repeated this year, although this time with a significant difference. The partners came to Epsom having already won the brace of Newmarket classics. Only the St Leger (Gr.1) stands between the Coolmore/Ballydoyle axis and a clean sweep of  Britain’s classics. No trainer has yet achieved the feat. Camelot, who waltzed away with the Derby 24 hours after stablemate Was landed the Investec Epsom Oaks, is expected to lead Ballydoyle’s assault on the St Leger. For the O’Brien family, it was a seminal occasion: the first time a father-and-son combination had won the Derby, and a rare such triumph for a nascent riding talent. Joseph joins the likes of Lester Piggot (Never Say Die), Walter Swinburn (Shergar), and Mikael Barzalona (Pour Moi) as teenage Derby-winning jockeys. O’Brien turned 19 only last month.

Camelot is the fourth winner in the past 11 Derby renewals for Coolmore, which annexed the race last year with the Andre Fabre-trained Pour Moi. There may be other Coolmore Derby winners in the pipeline but few, if any, will triumph with the aplomb of Camelot. This exceptional talent is the fourth Derby winner in eight years for his late sire, Montjeu, who joins a small but select sample of stallions to sire four Derby winners, the last of them Blandford, who sired Bahram to win the classic in 1935. This alone emphasizes the extent of Montjeu’s loss, aged 16, at Coolmore in March. He will stand alone in Derby history if he can add one more from the 3 ½ crops he has to follow. Camelot is the unique son of Montjeu in that he is the only colt by his sire to date with sufficient speed to win a Group 1 race over a mile at 3.

The dominance exerted by the Coolmore/Ballydoyle axis is such that some turf lovers are beginning to feel a little overindulged. There was no Maktoum representative within an unsatisfactory field of nine Derby runners, and the traffic has become so one-way that the outcome to championship races in Britain seems almost preordained.

“It’s incredible, he hasn’t set foot on grass at home since Epsom, as we’ve been flooded, said O’Brien, greeting his 11^th winner of the race and seventh in succession. “He’s passed every test all the way along, but I thought today would be too much for him, as we were asking him to swim against the tide. It was a massive call and I thought it was impossible, but John Magnier was very adamant that he wanted to support the race, and all the people and the sponsors. Joseph always said he didn’t like soft ground, and his wheels were spinning the whole way”.

“Every morning going in, we salute Nijinsky (the last Triple Crown winner) and we never thought we would have one that could pass all the same tests. Today was so special. We are looking for the next Sadler’s Wells”, the great trainer continued.

Coolmore supremo, Magnier added, “This horse has been tested all the way through and has shown the two-year-old form, the Guineas form, the hard, the soft and the battling and that’s what you want - you have to have all those qualities, so that’s my commercial. Sadler’s Wells ran in the bog here when winning the Beresford and did all those things too. It is like winter ground, but we had to run. Given a choice, we probably wouldn’t have done, but that would have been like the tail wagging the dog. We didn’t do the right thing, but we got away with it”.

Having allowed John Magnier his commercial, we’re compelled to mention that our own debutant for this breeding season, Golden Sword (also from the Sadler’s Wells tribe), ran second in the 2010 renewal of the Irish Derby whilst in Aidan O’Brien’s care. He will be on show to an international audience from more than twenty countries at Investec Stallion Day at Summerhill on Sunday 8^th July.

2012 QIPCO 2000 GUINEAS PREVIEW

Click above to watch a preview of the
2012 QIPCO 2000 Guineas with Lydia Hislop and Steve Mellish
(Image and Footage : Racing UK)

QIPCO 2000 GUINEAS (G1)
Newmarket, 5 May 2012

Bill Oppenheim
Thoroughbred Daily NewsBy about 10:30 in the morning this Saturday (US), the day of the G1 Kentucky Derby, the first Group 1 European Classic of the season, the G1 English 2000 Guineas, will have been run at Newmarket. You’d be forgiven for not having really known much about it. The European champion 2-year-old of 2011, Coolmore’s 8-5 favorite Camelot (Montjeu), hasn’t run this year. That’s not unusual, but what is unusual is that the ground in Europe has been soft for virtually the entire month of April. It’s going to dry out and warm up this week (thankfully), but when that happens you’re really guessing. Montjeu is a Derby sire, not a Guineas sire, and the G1 Racing Post Trophy, which Camelot won in his second and final start last year, is a Derby trial, not a Guineas trial. Camelot is no doubt a really good colt, but his price reflects as much a lack of knowledge or conviction about the competition as it does his actual chances of winning the race.

No other colt was trading at under 10-1 on Betfair on Tuesday morning, which shows you how little confidence there is in what might win if the favorite doesn’t. Second choice yesterday, at 10-1, was Born To Sea, the John Oxx-trained Invincible Spirit half-brother to Sea The Stars. He broke his maiden impressively in a six-furlong listed race in September, but then ran second in the G3 Killavullan Stakes to Nephrite, a Pivotal colt trained by Aidan O’Brien who flopped in his first start this year.

Five horses yesterday were bracketed between 12-1 and 14-1 on Betfair. Co-third favorites at 12-1 were: Trumpet Major (Arakan), impressive winner of the G3 Craven Stakes at Newmarket’s opening meeting a couple of weeks ago; Prince Khalid Abdullah’s Top Offer, a Dansili colt trained by Roger Charlton who won a seven-furlong maiden race in August impressively, but missed an intended warm-up in the G3 Greenham Stakes because of the soft ground; and Abtaal (Rock Hard Ten), trained by Jean-Claude Rouget for Sheikh Hamdan, and who ran second earlier this month in the G3 Prix Djebel at Maisons-Lafitte.

In fact, very unusually, the first three from the Djebel are running at Newmarket, and the Djebel winner, French Fifteen, from the first crop by the good French miler Turtle Bowl (a son of the obscure Night Shift horse Dyhim Diamond), would therefore have to qualify as pretty good value at 13-1.

Last year’s G1 Dewhurst Stakes, usually the top 2-year-old race in Europe, was one of those messy events in which the first five finished within two lengths of each other. Trumpet Major was fifth that day, but is a shorter price in the betting than the horses which were one-two, but which haven’t had a run this year. The Dewhurst second, Power (Oasis Dream), who won the G2 Coventry Stakes at Royal Ascot and the G1 National Stakes in Ireland, is presumably the Coolmore second string (danger!), at around 14-1. Parish Hill, the Dewhurst winner from the first crop by Teofilo, trained, like his sire, by Jim Bolger, is at 20-1. Parish Hall, by the way, is out of a Montjeu mare, so inbred 3x3 to Sadler’s Wells!

Extract from Thoroughbred Daily News

BORN TO SEA : BORN TO RULE

Click above to watch Born To Sea winning the Blenheim Stakes (L)
(Image : V.Chandler - Footage : All The Doyles)

BORN TO RULE

If ever a horse was born into greatness, it had to be a sibling of the greatest stallion of our era, Galileo, and of arguably the best racehorse of the last decade, Sea The Stars. That horse is Born To Sea, who debuted in the very race that rocketed Brave Tin Soldier to stardom as a juvenile, the Blenheim Stakes (Listed) at 1200m at The Curragh. It wasn’t that he won it, it was the way he won it, and while his trainer John Oxx was loathe to draw comparisons with his illustrious brothers, he did say he had some big plans for the colt.

The son of Invincible Spirit (a sprinting son of Green Desert) is said to be an imposing looking individual, who ought to be better suited by longer distances. His dam, Urban Sea, was an “Arc” winner at 2400m, and both of her most illustrious progeny excelled at that distance. Of course, there’s no guarantee Born To Sea will stay any sort of a trip, but the Invincible Spirits have at least shown some versatility, the odd one (Lawman), prevailing in the French Derby at 2000m. (The French can be different, as we know, and their Derby is 2000m, not the conventional European 2400m).

Interestingly, in the same week, the only horse in history to have won a Breeder’s Cup Juvenile and a Kentucky Derby, Street Sense, celebrated some notable successes in the Keeneland salesring, no doubt on the back of what horsemen know of his progeny, and in a week in which several of his first crop put up convincing performances. With his credentials, few would be surprised to see Street Sense emerge as a cracking sire; we’ve seen a number of them at Southern Hemisphere sales, and they look the sort to find their best in their classic years. Anything that comes to pass while they’re juveniles (as they are at the moment), is a bonus. On the face of what we’ve seen so far, there’s cause for the crew at Darley America to have smiles on their dials.

We have a small syndicate of investors at Summerhill who annually raid the weanling sales in Australia, and in the context of this story, they seem to have hit the jackpot. They have a son of Street Sense who’s being aimed at the Emperors Palace Ready To Run Sale, from the immediate family of Galileo, Sea The Stars and Born To Sea. That’s not the kind of pedigree you’d expect to see at a sale in this country, and it’s a rare jackpot, not only for the vendors, but for anyone among the investing public with a modicum of Street Sense.

The Emperors Palace Ready To Run Sale
Sunday 6th November

*Six cheque payment scheme for qualifying buyers.

Enquiries :
Linda Norval 27 (0) 33 263 1081
or email linda@summerhill.co.za
www.summerhill.co.za