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.

UP THE IRISH

Mick Goss hosts the Chinese Horseracing Delegation,
Box 3A Racing and Peter Gibson (Racing South Africa)
(Photo : Summerhill Stud)

“A bit of a tough weekend for the Old Country”

The headline to this article could be misleading, so don’t show it to persons under the age of 18. That said, while the Irish economy may well be under the “kosh”, you can’t get the Irish spirit down. About a month ago, we penned a piece about a €40 billion export success which Irish Thoroughbred Marketing had engineered with the Chinese authorities. Whatever else may be wrong with the finances of that remarkable little country, they continue to dominate the thoroughbred world in a manner no other country has done in modern times. As mankind’s history has taught us so many times, it’s often down to the labours of a few, and that’s very much the case with Ireland, where John Magnier’s Coolmore group have led the charge.

Nonetheless, this little country of ours, at the southernmost tip of what the civilized world to the north of us likes to call the “darkest continent”, has a more impressive history in the broader commercial world. Professor Nick Binedell (who’ll be a keynote speaker in our School of Excellence on Wednesday 11^th July), head of the Gordon Institute of Business Studies (one of the top twenty business schools on the planet,) likes to remind us that South Africa has produced more great companies than any other country of its size. That says something for the courage, the sense of enterprise and the pioneering spirit of this nation.

You might say then, that it’s hardly surprising we were one of the first countries in the world (after Ireland) to receive an official government delegation of citizens from the People’s Republic of China, but that’s not only to do with enterprise. It must be seen in the broader context of the value of our membership of the BRICS group of countries, and the fact that, of the bigger thoroughbred producing countries of the world, we’re better placed politically than most. The Americans and the Chinese are competitors; the Europeans are sceptical about Chinese money, and while they might have to take it one day, they’ll do so with reluctance; the Australians have been battling the Chinese about access to their mineral resources, and the Japanese have been at war with China for several centuries. It makes sense then, for China to talk to us about horse matters, hence the first delegation’s visit last week.

They were at Summerhill on Sunday, and we couldn’t have had a better group to accompany them. The fellows from Box 3A, are the new hopes for racehorse ownership among young people in this province. These fellows bring the camaraderie and the fresh spirit to racing that our generation once knew. If you haven’t yet heard of them, go to Greyville - you’re bound to hear them.

We did say at the outset that the title to this piece could be misleading. The reason is, if you’re a rugby man, you were watching the Springboks flatten the English on Saturday, and the Baby Boks take Argentina apart (35-3) on Sunday evening (if you weren’t in the blackout zone on the outskirts of Mooi River.) Both teams are in sublime form (in patches,) and while the Springboks need to put together 80 minutes of the kind of football they played in the first half of Saturday’s test, the fact is they’ve got the Poms cold. It will take a miracle turn-around to change next week’s outcome. Before we get too cocky though, remember the old bugbear, complacency.

And back to the Irish. Their junior team also gave England a good slap Sunday evening, so it was a bit of a tough weekend for the “Old Country”.

CAMELOT SURGES TO SCINTILLATING INVESTEC DERBY VICTORY

Click above to watch post Investec Derby interview with Aidan O’Brien…
(Image and Footage : Racing UK)

INVESTEC DERBY (Group 1)
Epsom Downs, Turf, 2400m
2 June 2012

Derrick Smith’s Camelot (GB) (Montjeu), trainer Aidan O’Brien and jockey Joseph O’Brien had a weight of expectation on their shoulders entering Saturday’s G1 Investec Derby, but the 8-13 favorite and his 19-year-old rider proved impervious to the pressure when surging to an emphatic five-length victory. In doing so, the much-lauded bay completed the 2000 Guineas / Epsom Derby double and became the first horse to win this great race for a father-son trainer-jockey combination.

Settled with only one behind by his supremely confident rider early, Camelot had his positively ridden stable companion Astrology (Ire) (Galileo) to aim at in the straight and, after powering past with a furlong remaining, carried on into the clear, with Main Sequence (USA) (Aldebaran) denying a Ballydoyle one-two in the final stride. “He must be right up there with the best,” John Magnier commented. “It is there for everybody to see, and we are fortunate to have anything to do with him, particularly in the year that his father died, which makes it more important.” When asked whether he would like to attempt the Triple Crown, the Coolmore supremo answered, “Wouldn’t anybody? We are going to have to take it race-by-race and give it a lot of thought. These things get to mean more as you get older. If you had asked me the same question 20 years ago, I would have looked the other way, but we’ll have to see what Derrick Smith and Michael Tabor think about it. We are going through a good patch at the moment, so we just have to savor the moment.”

If there was any panic rising as he guided Camelot down the hill still several lengths adrift of Ryan Moore and Astrology, it was not apparent until he asked the crowd’s choice to chase hard from the three-furlong pole. Hanging down the camber as he closed down his barnmate, Camelot’s acceleration had carried him into a winning position by the furlong pole and his subsequent tour de force allowed connections and favorite-backers time to bask in the moment. “I was a bit worried, as he didn’t come down the hill at all and didn’t handle the track that well,” Joseph O’Brien explained. “He’s a very special horse and I’m just very fortunate to be on his back.” Derrick Smith, who was celebrating an apt 100th Group 1 winner, added, “It’s not a dream, because I could never have dreamt I would do it. This is the one everybody wants in racing and what a horse and what a ride. I suppose the Triple Crown must be on the agenda and we may get pressured into it, but we’ll sit down and talk about it and make the final decision.”

Aidan O’Brien paid his own tribute to the sport’s new talent. “He always looked special, but this is something you can’t really dream about,” he commented. “He’s one of those unusual horses who seems to be always finishing no matter what trip you run him over. He’s magical and that’s the only way I can describe him - he couldn’t be better named. He has a great constitution and the way he came back and stood relaxed in the winner’s enclosure afterwards, he’s very much in control. That he’s in such a place in his head with that ability, it is very unusual. We really fancied Ryan Moore’s horse, Astrology, and an awful lot of things could have happened, but Joseph wanted to come with a long sustained run. When a horse can give distance away and go up into those gears and still mow horses down like that, it’s incredible. I think he was only going away at the line and he has an awful lot of different options now.”

Extract from Thoroughbred Daily News

THE KING IS DEAD : LONG LIVE VISIONAIRE

Visionaire
(Photo : Greig Muir)

VISIONAIRE (USA)
Grand Slam (USA) - Scarlet Tango (USA)

It’s been a sad old weekend for our friends at Ireland’s Coolmore Stud, the world’s most powerful stallion station. While there were odd shafts of light at a Dubai World Cup meeting where they amassed close to USD$3 million in earnings, courtesy mainly of a win in the UAE Derby and some frustrating seconds in the Sheema Classic and the Godolphin Mile, the big disappointment of the meeting for the Aidan O’Brien’s contingent must’ve been So You Think’s lacklustre 4^th in the World Cup itself. Not that it was the end of the world at all for an operation which bestrides racing’s biggest meetings like a colossus, but that wasn’t all.

The news of the extraordinarily successful sire, Montjeu’s passing on Friday (reported elsewhere in these columns within hours of it happening) was a mortal knock to John Magnier’s outfit at a time when their dominance of world affairs in the stallion department, was at an all-time high. And then, as if someone out there was waiting to administer the sledgehammer blow, Visionaire’s sire, Grand Slam, suffered a fatal heart attack. He was 17. Trained by D. Wayne Lukas and owned by Robert and Christina Baker, William Mack and David Cornstein, the son of fellow Lukas-trained MGSW and MGISP Bright Candles, kicked off his juvenile campaign with a track-record setting 11-length romp going 5 ½ furlongs at Belmont Park.

Later that fall, the bay added victories in the GI Champagne Stakes and GI Futurity Stakes before failing to finish in a problem-laden running of the GI Breeders’ Cup Juvenile. At three, he added a score in the Gr.2 Peter Pan Stakes, finished second in the Gr.2 Swaps Stakes and Gr.3 Jerome Handicap and was also third in the GI Haskell Invitational Handicap. The Overbrook Farm-bred rounded out his sophomore campaign, and his career, with a runner-up finish in the 1998 GI Breeders’ Cup Sprint. At stud, he was the sire of 2003 GI Breeders’ Cup Sprint winner Cajun Beat, and Canadian turf champion Grand Adventure, though his best performer was arguably the Summerhill Stud resident and 2008 GI King’s Bishop Stakes hero, Visionaire. His other standouts, among a highly commendable 73 Stakes winners from 11 crops (an average of almost 7 per crop), include Limehouse and Strong Hope.

Ashford Stud manager Dermot Ryan said, “Grand Slam was a pleasure to have here and he was very popular with breeders, as he sired nearly 800 winners and has progeny earnings of over $64 million.

THE WAR IS OVER, BUT THE WAR IS ON

Click above to watch the 2012 Dubai World Cup TVC..
(Image and Footage : Dubai Media)

DUBAI WORLD CUP
“We’re all in for a helluva night.”

Racing fans around the world must’ve been bewildered when, about eight years ago, Dubai’s Ruler, Sheikh Mohammed announced through his deputies that he and his brothers would no longer be patronising the stallions of their arch rivals, John Magnier’s Coolmore group, nor buying their progeny at the yearling sales. Although no official reasons were given, the grapevine had it (strongly) that the Sheikhs’ noses were out of joint because the Irish seldom, if ever, bought the progeny of their stallions, and especially because they were said to have snubbed (or plainly put, “boycotted”,) the Dubai World Cup meeting by not sending their horses there. And when they did send one, exception was made that it was accompanied only by “the secretary.” If you know Tammy Twoomey, you’d hardly call her “the secretary”.

Of course, it happened when Coolmore were riding high, and sweeping all before them, and whilst their dominance wasn’t quite at the level it is today, (mainly because, at the time, the Arabs still possessed some competitive Coolmore-sired horses in their own armoury,) it was true that you seldom found a horse in the colours of any one of the Coolmore partners, Susan Magnier or Michael Tabor at the World Cup.

If you spoke to the Irish though, they’d proffer a simple explanation. Their horses were programmed for the European and North American seasons, and they needed a break. The winter was the perfect time. The Dubai World Cup, on the other hand, was something of an imposition on the racing programme, as it came late in the day in the traditional affairs of our sport, and we don’t like change, you know. But to be fair, it filled a great gap for racing fans all over the globe, because March happens to be a quiet time, particularly if you’re not European or North American. Besides, it injected a massive flow of funds into the game, to be welcomed no matter where it slots, and the lure of these riches is evident in the fields for this weekend.

There are five Group Ones and two Group Twos in Saturday’s World Cup extravaganza, and Coolmore have come to the party. Aidan O’Brien’s intent is especially evident in the Sheema Classic (Gr.1) ($5 million over 2410m), where he has engaged his two stars, Treasure Beach and St Nicholas Abbey. In the Duty Free, (also for $5 million over 1800m) he has Giant’s Causeway’s capable son, Await The Dawn, while he’s named his number one horse of last year, So You Think, for the $10 million World Cup itself. O’Brien has obviously decided to make a meal of the day with Wrote in the $2 million UAE Derby, and the team has another ticket in Mike de Kock’s Viscount Nelson in the Godolphin Mile.

What is evident though, is that things have either thawed between these two leviathans of the game, and Coolmore have taken the practical route, or it may be a case of “cash in while there is war and we have the cattle.” Of one thing there’s little doubt: the Irish are there for the dough as much as the sport, and we’re all in for a helluva night.

www.dubaiworldcup.com