O’brien has treble chance of a record ninth Guineas

Aidan O’brien knows what attributes a horse needs to win the Qipco 2000 Guineas and heads to Newmarket today with high hopes of adding to his record tally.

The Ballydoyle handler is triple-handed as he seeks a remarkable ninth success in the race, 20 years after King Of Kings opened his account. He has taken two of the last three runnings and has another strong hand in the colts’ Classic as he saddles Gustav Klimt, Saxon Warrior and Murillo.

“You have to have a pacey horse, they have to stay well, and usually they have to be straightforward,” said O’brien.

“It’s a tough race and Newmarket is a tough track, especially at that time for a threeyear-old. They have to be very classy and mature early.”

Gustav Klimt certainly falls into that bracket, having already won a Guineas trial at Leopardstown in April.

O’brien, pictured, said: “It was soft ground [in the trial] – very heavy, really – and probably not ideal, but we felt we needed to run him.

“We always thought he would prefer better ground and he did well to quicken in the ground. Ryan [Moore] rode him in the July meeting last year and was very, very full of him. You are never sure, but we were delighted with his run in Leopardstown. We think, and hope, he’s in good form.” As an unbeaten Group One-winning juvenile, Saxon Warrior arguably fits the trend of recent O’brien winners as he will make his seasonal reappearance. “We’ve probably never had a horse to change so much over winter as he has. He’s turned into a monster of a horse – big, powerful and strong,” said O’brien.

“We think he will get further than a mile. It will be a nice place to start him and we look forward to him for the rest of the year.

“He looks a very unusual horse at the moment [in] how much he has changed from two to three, but we have to start somewhere.”

Without a doubt, the horse with the best breeding in the race is Mark Johnston’s Elarqam, a son of 2012 Guineas winner Frankel out of 1000 Guineas heroine in Attraction, who was also trained by the Middleham man.

Johnston said: “Sheikh Hamdan [owner] and Jim Crowley [jockey] both believed last season that Elarqam would want a mile and a quarter this year, so we are going into the 2000 Guineas saying, ‘This might not be the whole story’.

“But the Guineas is the best Derby trial and if he was not to finish in the first three, you could well see him going on to the Dante and possibly to Epsom.”