WHERE THERE’S A WILL THERE’S A WAY
BUICK CAN PUT HIS DISAPPOINTING SEASON BEHIND HIM WITH ARC WIN...
TWO massive opportunities within seven days for William Buick have the potential to make the jockey reflect on 2019 in a completely different way.
Sidelined for 12 weeks in the summer with a serious and worrying head injury, Buick missed some of the biggest meetings of the season.
They included Royal Ascot, where his regular lightning-fast mount Blue Point won both the King’s Stand Stakes and the Golden Jubilee Stakes.
Yet on Sunday, the 31-year-old rider partners Ghaiyyath in the Prix de L’Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp, convinced that his Charlie Appleby-trained mount is one of the few horses in the likely 12-runner line-up that can trouble odds- on, historychasing mare Enable.
The following Saturday, Buick will go into the Group One Dewhurst Stakes at Newmarket knowing his mount, Appleby’s unbeaten Pinatubo, produced one of the best efforts by a European two-year-old in the past 50 years when winning the Group One National Stakes at the Curragh last month by nine lengths.
Already, Pinatubo is hot favourite for next year’s 2,000 Guineas and being talked about with the sort of reverence reserved for a select few horses, including the mighty Frankel.
Ghaiyyath, whose 2018 Derby aspirations were dashed by injury, looked a force to be reckoned with after an easy comeback win in the Prix Harcourt at Longchamp in April.
But he was not the same horse when returning to the track three weeks later, finishing four-and-a-half lengths fourth to fellow Arc hope Waldgeist in the Prix Ganay.
RESTED
until early last month and upped to a mile- and- a- half, the distance of the Arc, Ghayyaith slammed his rivals by 14 lengths in the Group One Grosser Preis Von Baden. It was only the seventh race of the colt’s career.
Behind Ghayyaith, a son of Dubawi who cost €1.1million (£980,000) as a yearling and races in the colours of Sheik Mohammed’s Godolphin empire, was German Derby winner Laccario in a race won in 2011 by Danedream before her Arc success.
Buick said: ‘All focus is on Enable and rightly so. She is going for history. With our horse, we know he’s good but we don’t quite know how good he is. We will find out in the Arc. I don’t think we are under the radar, but it is always nice when you are a little bit of an underdog. Sheik Mohammed, Charlie and me have always believed in the horse. When you win a Group One race by 14 lengths, you have to take it seriously.
‘The Ganay was deflating. He did not run a bad race but he did not feel the same horse as he did in the Prix Harcourt.
‘He is a big horse who gives everything in everything he does, whether it be in his work or races. That’s probably why he thrives on a little time between his races.
‘He looks more the finished article now and he would not be running in the Arc if we did not think he had a good shot at it.’
Buick had to contend with concussion-related Post Head Injury Syndrome after being unseated on the way to the start at Ascot on May 11.
He rode the next day before feeling ill and reporting for tests at Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge. Buick said the prospect of riding horses like Ghaiyyath and Pinatubo had spurred his comeback.
The jockey added: ‘I was never concerned about getting back, it was just a matter of when. I had a spell in Dubai getting fit.
‘I always knew I was coming back in a very important time of the season. It spurred me on and motivated me even more.’
The cause of Ghaiyyath was not helped yesterday when he was drawn in the widest stall in what will be a 12-strong line-up for the Arc, prompting one bookmaker to push the fourth favourite’s odds out to 12-1.
Odds-on favourite Enable and Frankie Dettori will start from stall nine but the fact that it will be the smallest number of runners in the race since Dylan Thomas won in 2007 means the effect of the draw will not be as significant as in some renewals. FORMER jockey Tom Morgan has been banned from the sport for 18 months. Morgan, a former champion jump jockey in Ireland, whose biggest wins included the 1988 Queen Mother Champion Chase on Pearlyman, breached BHA rules on betting while working for trainers Richard Phillips and David Wintle in a case which dated back to 2005.