Derby Days
THE Epsom Derby was won by a uniquely bred horse with apparently talent rarely seen before at Ballydoyle and lauded after Epsom by trainer Aidan O’Brien as “the best he has trained”.
O’Brien also reported that the organisation’s supremo John Magnier had told him that Auguste Rodin was “the most important horse”; his arrival as a yearling from Coolmore’s nursery section to the Irish training camp must have been on par with the coming of the messiah, and rightly so for a horse who could promise so much for the breeding operation.
These plaudits may have looked empty words after Auguste Rodin finished at the back of the field in the 2,000 Guineas, but the Group 1-winning two-year-old righted that defeat at Epsom, the faster ground, smooth passage through the race, the 1m4f and untroubled journey over from Ireland all acting in his favour.
He and the runner-up King Of Steel went clear ahead of the field, none of the others able to produce a matching turn of foot despite the race run at a seemingly slow pace.
King Of Steel threw out a huge performance on seasonal debut.
Are the pair that much better than their Classic opponents, or did the pair leave behind a less-than-exceptional field, King Of Steel’s jockey Kevin Stott giving his mount a fine ride off a slow pace to slip the field in the straight, the son of Wootton Bassett only bettered once that lack of a previous outing caught up with in the last 50 yards.
Time will tell, and come the end of the season we will know whether this year’s Derby was brilliant or average, whether the words from Coolmore are hyperbole, or have genuine merit. Whatever the outcome, O’Brien, understandably, certainly had a gleam in his eye at Epsom.
But no sooner had the Coolmore team hailed their son of Deep Impact an equine superstar, than another one appeared in France – the Jean Claude Rouget-trained Ace Impact blitzing the Jockey-Club field and leading TV commentators to proclaim the son of Cracksman as the best European middle-distance horse of the year . The 1m2f race, which has very much been a stallion-making race in recent years, was run in a record time.
It was, of course, the first Classic and Group 1 winner for Darley-based sire Cracksman, the four-time Group 1 winner and from the first crop son of Frankel, the son of Galileo who got away from Coolmore and sire of two Classic winners in 2023.
Jocelyn de Moubray will review all the Classics in detail in the next issue of International Thoroughbred and will offer some more immediate reflections on the race before the season starts to pan out.
Auguste Rodin, as a son of Deep Impact and from such a strong female line, offers Coolmore a second chance at developing a stallion son of the Japanese champion, backing its current development of Saxon Warrior.
Both will be under pressure to become the next Coolmore stallion with international super sire status.
One thing that is certain, however, is that two big international stud decisions made by Coolmore paid off in this year’s Epsom Classic.
Travelling horses around the world is not an unknown to Coolmore, but flying a three-time Group 1-winning mare by the generation-defining stallion Galileo, alongside a handful of the farm’s blue chip mares, around the world should never be underestimated, particularly when in-foal mares are then transported back to Europe
And, of course as it always does in racing, luck and good timing played its part – Rhododendron had just come to the end of her career and was a maiden mare. The decision made sense to happen in 2019, and for luck it did – the Japanese champion sire died later that spring as a 17-year-old.
The second decision, finalised a year later and closer to home, was the purchase of Wootton Bassett. The rare decision by the team to buy a stallion part-way through his second career and already a 12-year-old was unusual, and reflected the extraordinary results the son of Iffraaj was achieving with his early crops.
Despite now covering bigger and different books of mares, the stallion is stepping up to the challenge and is continuing to reap rewards, King Of Steel giving him a first progeny placing in a Classic outside of France.
King Of Steel was produced off the sire’s first step into the higher-level fee brackets, his Verglas dam Eldacar covered off a fee of €40,000, the price rise given after Alamazor’s championship year in 2016 and subsequent efforts in stakes races by paternal siblings such as Wootton, Do Re Mi Fa Sol and Mamba Noire.
King Of Steel, a sizeable unit, looks to have plenty of improvement ahead of him as the season unwinds, let’s hope that he, Ace Impact and Auguste Rodin take each other one at some point his year.
A shout out must go to the bravery of the security team at Epsom and the rugby-tackling abilities of its staff. They did not flinch at moving forwards to take down the fool who had gone on track, despite having seen that the race had started.
They did not know whether the situation would be resolved by the time the field had rounded Tattenham corner, or whether the idiot might have a knife or any dangerous substances on his person.
My race watching position for the Derby by the winning post gave me one eye on the progress of the field as well as the activities in the home straight, and my eye was flicking from one to the other to gauge progress of both trying to judge whether there would be quick resolution or if more bodies try might try and infiltrate the course. It was nerve-wracking in the least.
Animals Rising’s leadership has got to take some responsibility now and manage its people / followers correctly and produce a right and proper campaign before a serious accident is caused by its largely young and unwitting followers.
The organisation’s stated aim is that animals should not have blood spilled for nutrition’s sake, they should not want to have blood on their hands caused by its own actions.
