CLEAN SWEEP!
Glass Slippers sets tone as Europeans boss Breeders’ Cup
TARNAWA gave Irish trainer Dermot Weld his first Breeders’ Cup win with a last-to-first swoop in the Keeneland home straight to land the $4million Turf and top a sensational night for the European raiders in Kentucky.
Weld has won Group One races in seven different countries around the world including the Melbourne Cup with Vintage Crop (1993) and Media Puzzle (2002), as well as becoming the first European trainer to win a leg of the US Triple Crown with Go And Go in the 1990 Belmont Stakes.
But he had missed out on success with 16 previous runners at the Breeders’ Cup meeting until 3-1 shot Tarnawa ran out a length winner from Aidan O’Brien’s Magical.
Tarnawa’s win was also a first at the Breeders’ Cup for two-time Irish champion jockey Colin Keane, who was a late call-up for the ride after Christophe Soumillon was ruled out after a positive test for Covid-19.
The victory meant Europeans won all four Turf races on day two of the meeting for the first time after successes for Kevin Ryan-trained Glass Slippers (Tom Eaves) in the Turf Sprint and James Fanshawe’s Audarya (Pierre-Charles Boudot) in the Filly & Mare Turf — while Boudot-partnered 40-1 shot Order of Australia in leading home an
O’Brien 1-2-3 from Circus Maximus and Lope Y Fernandez in the Mile. Ladbrokes made Aga Khan-owned
Tarnawa an 8-1 shot for next year’s Prix de L’Arc de Triomphe.
Whether she stays in training as a five-year-old has yet to be announced but, if she does, those odds will shrink after she added to impressive wins in the Prix Vermeille and Prix de L’Opera at Longchamp.
Mark Weld, representing his father at Keeneland, said: ‘It is thrilling to win a race like this — it doesn’t get any bigger.
‘She is like a jet, when she see the runway she takes off. I am sad my dad is not here but that Covid situation has put paid to that.’
Soumillon was supposed to ride Order Of Australia as well. When it was first announced he would have to miss the ride it did not seem a big deal.
But that was before the colt, who had been running over longer distances with a fourth in the Irish
Derby as well as being beaten almost 50 lengths on his last run, became O’Brien’s first Breeders’ Cup Mile winner and the longest priced winner in the race’s history with his victory.
French champion Boudot also stood in for the Covid-sidelined compatriot Ioritz Mendizabal on Audarya, a winner with his first Breeders’ Cup runner for trainer James Fanshawe.
The filly, who beat Rushing Fall a neck in track record time, races in the colours of Alison Swinburn, widow of the late three-time Derby winning jockey Walter Swinburn, and has made massive strides this year, progressing from handicaps to Group Ones.
She stays in training next year as does Glass Slippers, who gave his jockey Tom Eaves his biggest ever success as he scraped the paint hugging the rail and saving ground around the home turn before grabbing a gap to beat Wet Your Whistle half a length.
The build-up to the feature Classic had been dominated by trainer Bob Baffert and so it proved with John Velazquez-ridden Kentucky Derby winner Authentic beating stablemate Improbable.