O’Brien jun gets one over his more-renowned dad
CUP: JOSEPH WON THE MELBOURNE CUP AT THE EXPENSE OF HIS FATHER AIDAN
Senior wins 27th Group 1 win of the year on Friday at Breeders’ Cup.
Joseph O’Brien won the Derby for his father Aidan in 2014 riding a horse called Australia. Yesterday at Flemington he was the toast of Australia when winning the Melbourne Cup as a trainer with Rekindling, beating his father’s charge Johann Vermeer in a dramatic all-Irish finish.
“Anything you can do I can do better.” Those words were ringing down the telephone line between Melbourne and Barbados yesterday as Joseph relayed to his record-breaking dad how Rekindling, his first runner in the race in what is only his second season at the helm, had denied Aidan that elusive first Cup.
Aidan, who clocked up a phenomenal 27th Grade 1 victory of 2017 when Mendelssohn won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf in California last Friday, missed “The Race That Stops A Nation”, opting to take “my first proper holiday in years” in the Caribbean.
However, Joseph ensured that Guinness was flowing freely in Melbourne throughout the day, courtesy of a 1-2 for the O’Brien family, with champion Irish jumps trainer Willie Mullins making it a clean sweep for the Emerald Isle by saddling third-placed Max Dynamite, who had been runner-up two years ago.
How often have the O’Briens rewritten the training manual. It’s 76 years since a three-year-old last won Australia’s most prestigious race (Skipton), but at 24 Joseph becomes the youngest to saddle the winner of the world’s richest handicap, worth £3.6 million, in its 157-year history.
“It’s unreal – I can’t believe I’ve done it. Dad has just been on the phone and was the first to congratulate me,” said O’Brien jun.
Leading Australian racehorse owner Lloyd Williams, who also had the runner-up, was celebrating a sixth triumph in the race. He said: “I am so proud of Joseph. He’s an absolute star and this is a dream come true.”
Local jockey Corey Brown brought Rekindling, fourth in the St Leger at Doncaster last month, home to tumultuous applause in a race in which Europe were responsible for nine of the first 11, though the first Brit to pass the line was fifth-placed Nakeeta – and he’s Scottish!
It has been an extended weekend of celebrations for the Europeans, who boasted their biggest battalion ever at a Breeders’ Cup and left San Diego with three winners, one more than at Santa Anita last year - courtesy of O’Brien, Charlie Appleby and Andre Fabre.
Whereas Ryan Moore suffered a nightmare up the inside on Coolmore’s dual Group 1 winner Happily in the Juvenile Fillies Turf, he was always in the right place on stablemate Mendelssohn in the colts’ equivalent.
Mendelssohn, the Dewhurst runner-up, was also entered for the dirt race.
However O’Brien felt that he might lack the necessary experience to beat the Americans in their own back yard this year.
But Mendelssohn is a halfbrother to three-times Breeders’ Cup Dirt winner Beholder, so O’Brien has plans to bring him back across the Atlantic next May in an attempt to give “the lads” that elusive first Kentucky Derby success on that unique surface at Churchill Downs.
The Americans claim that the Breeders’ Cup is “the greatest two days in horseracing”, yet tell that to punters who climbed their way out of a painful bloodbath come Saturday night, having celebrated only one winning favourite in 13 races at the equine equivalent of the World Series.
Run for the first time at Del Mar, the idiosyncratic track that is arguably more suitable to greyhounds than multi-million Rand thoroughbreds, the Breeders Cup’ produced the second-biggest shock in its 34-year history when 66-1 shot Bar Of Gold silenced the 38,000 crowd in the Filly & Mare Sprint.
Punters had already been rocking and reeling as they tried to digest winners at 40-1, 20-1 and 18-1 and many had headed for the exits - waving the white flag of surrender - long before secondfavourite Gun Runner restored some sort of sanity for followers of the formbook when winning the $6-million Classic.
World Approval, who emulated stablemate Tepin by winning the Mile, was the only market leader successful, while only two others managed to even hit the board, prompting several punters, struggling to find the cab fare home, to look to the skies and say “thank heavens the Breeders’ Cup is back in Kentucky next year”.
Sheikh Mohammed has postponed a trip to the paddocks for Wuheida, who despite having her Classic hopes crushed when she suffered a stress fracture last spring, bounced back with a brilliant win for Godolphin in the Fillies & Mare Turf.
Wuheida may not be seen again until Deauville next August as the Sheikh has told Appleby to train her with the defence of that crown at Churchill Downs next year the main priority.
A first Breeders’ Cup winner for William Buick – he cracked a vertebrae when taking a fall when the ill-fated Permian broke down in Chicago in August – Wuheida made the most of her good draw to romp home from Coolmore’s Rhododendron, who blitzed home from a mile back, having got hung up in traffic from her coffin box No 14 stall.
Godolphin have been very much in the shadow of Coolmore these past few years but the boys in blue enjoyed their time in the limelight, topping up Wuheida’s celebrations by winning the Turf with Talismanic, who was a third winner in the race for French legend Andre Fabre.
Talismanic crossed the Atlantic as a solid Group 2 horse – you couldn’t find him with radar in last year’s Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe – but, relishing the fast ground, produced a career-best performance to give Mickael Barzalona his first winner at the USA’s most prestigious meeting when beating last year’s winner Beach Patrol.