Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
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CHURCHILL TAKES GUINEAS TO EARN O’BRIEN A RECORD
NEVER was so much owed by so many to so few as Churchill delivered on punters’ winter dreams in the QIPCO 2000 Guineas.
The son of Galileo had been a hot favourite for the first Classic of the 2017 season since landing the Group 1 Dewhurst Stakes at the Rowley Mile course last October.
And the 6-4 market leader lived up to his billing under Ryan Moore with a one-length defeat of Barney Roy at Newmarket yesterday to give trainer Aidan O’Brien a record eighth triumph in the colts’ test.
The Ballydoyle master, eclipsing the tally of 19th century trainer John Scott, admitted: “We were a bit nervous with Churchill.
“He was always a special horse, but it was his first run of the year and there were a lot of horses there with a lot of solid form.
“The horses that had won their trials seemed to have stepped up a lot on what they’d done last year,
so it was very much into the unknown.
“He was always a big, mature horse last year, and when they are that big and mature you are worried about them going from two to three.
“But everyone was happy with him at home, so that was giving us confidence,” added O’Brien, who fields three fillies – Rhododendron, Winter and Hydrangea – in the 1000 Guineas today as he bids to do the double for the third time.
Churchill is as short as 11-4 for the Investec Derby at Epsom on June 3, but O’Brien urged caution.
“He’s by Galileo – a big influence for stamina – but he’s out of a very fast mare,” he said. “The lads make all those decisions.”
Michael Tabor, who with fellow ‘lads’ – and Coolmore stud owners John Magnier and Derrick Smith – will rule on Churchill’s next target, warned: “If you know they’re going to stay a mile and a half, they usually haven’t got the speed. He’s got the speed. If I said he was going to run the Derby, I’d be saying the wrong thing, because it wouldn’t be the truth. Who knows?”
A more likely next port of call is the one-mile St James’s Palace Stakes at Royal Ascot, in which Churchill will cross swords with Barney Roy, who was having just the third outing of his life here.
“Barney Roy was slightly unlucky – whether it made a difference, we’ll find out when they take each other on again,” said the runnerup’s trainer Richard Hannon.