Classic from Aidan
O’Brien still re-writing record books
AIDAN O’BRIEN showed that his team are in rude good health when he won his sixth Qipco British 1,000 Guineas at Newmarket on Sunday with an impressive run by Love, following up on second in the 2,000 with Wichita, and second in the Group 1 Coronation Stakes with Anthony Van Dyck, in the preceding two days.
Love (4/1) was his only runner in the fillies’ classic, and Ryan Moore had a pretty untroubled run for this level.
They surged clear to romp in by four and a quarter lengths, reversing last year’s clash with the favourite, Quadrilateral (5/2), who was third a head behind Richard Hannon’s Cloak of Spirits (12/1). It is Aidan’s fourth time to win it in the past five years.
This was his 36th English Classic and he is now second of all time. Overall leader on 40 is John Scott, who died in 1871, and Henry Cecil on 25 is in fifth place and is the only other person from the modern era to figure.
He has won an incredible 330 Group 1 races on the flat - 149 in Britain, 102 in Ireland, 45 in France, and 24 in the U.S.A. - and he has also won them in Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, Italy and the U.A.E.
In 2017 he set a world record with 28 Group 1s in a single season. If you add in 22 in National Hunt early in his career, he has a total of 352.
Aidan had a team of four in the first Classic of the season, the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket on Saturday.
Arizona was thought to be O’Brien’s number one and the choice of Ryan Moore, but he drifted in the betting and all the money came for his Wichita, ridden by Frankie Dettori, backed from 15/1 into 15/2.
Pinatubo, unbeaten in six races as a twoyear-old, was the hot favourite at 5/6, but
Wichita saw him off after a lengthy battle.
However, Kameko (10/1) came bursting through at the end to get by them both by a neck and a length under Oisín Murphy. O’Brien’s other three were down the field, with Arizona the last of them in eleventh place.
His Anthony Van Dyck won the Epsom Derby last year but has failed to win since, though competing at a very high level. He was second again in the first Group 1 of the campaign, the Coronation Stakes.
He was as game as ever but he could not overhaul all-the-way leader and favourite,
Ghaiyyath (11/10f), though he did beat old rival, Stradivarius (4/1), into third.
Irish racing resumed behind closed doors at Naas on Monday, but all the attention is on the Curragh this weekend for the Tattersalls Irish Guineas Festival, with the 2,000 on Saturday supported by three other Group races, and the fillies’ race in the 1,000 on Sunday, supported by the Tattersalls Gold Cup. Aidan will be hoping to add to his Classic tally.
Taghmon jockey, P.J. McDonald, was in the spotlight for the most unfortunate reason on the first day of racing’s return at Newcastle on Monday, June 1, after a 76-day Covid-19 break.
He was involved in a serious incident in the eighth race when his horse, December Second, clipped heels and came down, also bringing down Jim Crowley’s mount, Financial Conduct. Sadly, while both jockeys were able to walk away, December Second sustained a fatal injury.
Falls on the flat are thankfully quite rare. However, when they do happen they can be serious as the horses are travelling at a much higher speed than the jumpers.
McDonald was back in the saddle for the tenth and final race.
The Taghmon man has propelled himself, through dedication and hard work, to the top of his profession in the past five years and in the 2019 calendar year he rode 132 winners. He was joint fifth in the official championship, a great achievement from a total field of 450 professionals and 300 amateurs.
He did get off the mark for this new season at Newcastle on Tuesday when winning a five-furlong maiden on Victory Heights (6/1) for Jim Tate, and he scored a nice-priced double for trainer Mark Johnston on the high-class card at Newmarket on Saturday, on Blown by the Wind and The Trader (both 6/1).
IT WAS interesting to see that the first 32 games down for decision when the Premier League returns in England will be aired live on various television channels. The full schedule of what’s on and when appeared in various media outlets over the weekend, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one working out how many games I could potentially watch, based on the stations currently at my disposal.
I was quite pleased with the tally of 24 out of 32. And while I certainly won’t watch each and every game, it’s still nice to know that they will be there to be looked at if I so desire.
Even those without Sky in their homes will get to see a few matches, with the BBC also getting in on the act.
And with plans to show every game later on in the fixtures schedule too, football fans will certainly be spoiled for choice.
That got me thinking about the return of club G.A.A. fare from July 31.
TG4 have performed exceptional work in that field for a long number of years at this stage, while RTE also started showing a selection of Saturday night matches in 2019.
Let’s hope that this trend will continue, as it would be wonderful to spend the months of August, September and early October watching as many club matches as possible.
‘The Sunday Game’ could even perhaps branch out into reviewing games at that level before the inter-county season returns.
While the Davy Fitzgerald interview was of particular interest to Wexford watchers at the start of last weekend’s show, the programme is really struggling to fill 90 minutes with interesting material in our humble opinion.
That’s largely because producers are restricted to only showing highlights from games of very recent vintage as a result of restrictions imposed on them via the latest media rights agreement.
If they were able to pick half a dozen club matches to pore over from any given weekend after July 31, that would be a programme well worth watching.
SPEAKING OF Davy Fitz, the call has gone out to Wexford in the search for participants in the eighth series of Ireland’s Fittest Family on RTE. The producers are directing people to visit rte.ie/irelandsfittestfamily, or call 085-8375387 for more information.