Navy’s on course to conquer Everest CUP HERO NOW LINED UP FOR WORLD’S RICHEST TURF RACE
US NAVY FLAG reinvented himself as a sprinter to lift the Group 1 July Cup at Newmarket, and will now bid to reach Everest and land the world’s richest turf face.
After racking up a rare double in the six-furlong Middle Park Stakes and the Dewhurst Stakes over seven at Newmarket’s Rowley Mile track last autumn, the Aidan O’Brien-trained son of War Front was aimed at the top one-mile prizes this spring.
But defeats when fifth in the Poule d’Essai des Poulains at Longchamp, second in the Irish 2,000 Guineas at the Curragh and ninth in the St James’s Palace Stakes at Royal Ascot persuaded O’Brien to bring the three-year-old back to sprint distances.
And the plan yielded an immediate return as Ryan Moore’s mount, sent off at 8-1, made the running over all bar a few yards of the final six furlongs of the Summer Course, finding generously for pressure to deny last year’s third Brando by a length and threequarters.
“Where he threw us was when he won a Dewhurst after making the running,” said O’Brien, who will aim US Navy Flag at The Everest – a six-furlong contest worth £5.5m and run at Randwick in Sydney on 13 October.
“When he did that, we said we had to give him a chance at a mile. He ran a huge race in the Irish Guineas. He was absolutely out on his head the last furlong but still kept trying.
“Then we had another go at Ascot and thought it wasn’t fair to him, we have to go back to sprinting.
“You could see the field closing on him, but we knew the one thing he wasn’t going to do was lie down. As night follows day, he started to go again.
“For him to have such a tough campaign as a threeyear-old, and to go back to sprinting after running over a mile is unbelievable.” added O’Brien, winning the July Cup for the fourth time after Stravinsky (1999), Mozart (2001) and Starspangledbanner (2010). Paddy Power quote him at 8-1 for the Randwick race, and O’Brien (left) added: “The plan was to give him a break after this, and that’s what he’ll have, and then he’ll be trained with the Everest in mind.” The unbeaten Charlie Appleby-trained Quorto earned a 12-1 quote for next year’s 2,000 Guineas after recording a three-and-threequarter-length supremacy over O’Brien’s Cape Of Good Hope in the Group 2 Superlative Stakes.
“He has shown some gears there, he’s an exciting horse,” said Appleby, who expects to make a decision over the future of his sidelined Derby winner Masar later today.
PAUL MULRENNAN will miss Glorious Goodwood and York’s Ebor fixture after suffering a triple fracture of his back in a fall on the gallops yesterday morning.
Mulrennan was taken to a Darlington hospital, and his agent Richard Hale said: “The fracture is at the bottom of his back.
“He’s sore but walking. However, he’ll be out for the foreseeable.”