Wulf in sheep’s clothing
O’BRIEN WARNING: 25-1 SHOT CAN CAUSE GOLD CUP UPSET
Derek O’Connor to catch Outlander and win by a neck.
But that was merely Edwulf ’s latest trick.
Last March, the bay lay heaving on the Cheltenham turf after collapsing yards short of the winning post for the four-mile JT McNamara National Hunt Chase.
Vets attended the stricken bay on the track – delaying the start of the afternoon’s final race – before Edwulf ’s treatment continued in a horse ambulance.
After two weeks’ convalescence in an equine hospital in nearby Tewkesbury, he returned to Ireland.
O’Brien (above) recalled: “He basically ran out of oxygen. It was touch and go at a point but the vets and everyone on course were so good. “We brought him back slowly. JP said to take our time. If he never ran again, then fine.” As winter advanced, O’Brien divined a spark in Edwulf’s early morning drills and conditioned the son of Kayf Tara for the Leopardstown Christmas Chase in late December. A first try at Grade 1 level proved beyond him as O’Connor eased his partner out of the race with three fences still to jump. But O’Brien, a Group 1 winner on the Flat in 2016 during his first season with a trainer’s licence – he captured the Melbourne Cup last November when Rekindling beat his father’s Johannes Vermeer for the ‘race that stops a nation’ – persevered, and pressed on for the Irish Gold Cup.
“We expected him to run a big race – not win, but we thought he could finish in the first four,” said the 24-year-old. “His work all along was very good, and some of the lads had fivers and tenners on him.”
Sizing John won at Leopardstown before racking up the Gold Cup double at Cheltenham, and O’Brien’s message to punters on Friday week – not surprisingly, with Edwulf – is simple: Expect the unexpected.
He said: “It’s an unbelievable story. Horses who go through something like that can often race again but very few come back to form or even improve.
“You only have to look back through the results of the last 10 or 15 years and see what you expected, and what actually happened.
“It’s the Gold Cup. An awful lot of things can happen.”