HERO HARZAND DEFIES PAIN
Star colt storms Derby while battling an injury to tick another box for world-conquering Weld
HARZAND yesterday won the most open Investec Derby run this century when the drama the colt had to endure before the race far outweighed the trouble he had in winning Britain’s premier Classic.
The son of 2009 Derby winner Sea The Stars clinically pulled a length and a half clear of Aidan O’Brientrained 7-2 favourite US Army Ranger to give eight-time Irish champion jockey Pat Smullen his first win in the race.
Victory also fills in a notable space on the resume of Curragh trainer Dermot Weld, who has enjoyed bigrace success around the globe.
A further length and quarter back in third was O’Brien’s Idaho, while Frankie Dettori’s bid to win the race for a third time ended in a fourthplaced finish on John Gosden’s Wings Of Desire. Harzand also provided a fifth Derby win for his owner the Aga Khan — one more than his grandfather — following Sinndar (2000), Kahyasi (1988), Shahrastani (1986), and the great Shergar in 1981.
But for much of the morning, Harzand’s very participation in the £1.54million race had hung in the balance after he pulled off a shoe shortly before being flown from Ireland and a nail pierced a hoof.
For four hours, well-backed 13-2 shot Harzand, stood with his foot in a bucket of ice and Weld and his staff made three separate checks on the colt’s soundness.
That last came in the form of telling Smullen to pull out his mount at the start if he was not happy.
Weld said: ‘I thought he was very unlikely to run. When the box was at the airport he stood on himself and pulled a racing plate and, in doing that, drew blood.
‘He was very sore but my excellent staff used some old-fashioned treatments. We poulticed him and he travelled with that on his foot.’
Weld has long been an international trailblazer among trainers. As well as supplying the winners of 23 European Classics, including two Irish Derbys, his Go And Go became the first horse outside North America to land a leg of US Triple Crown, when winning the 1990 Belmont Stakes.
He also became the first European trainer to win the Melbourne Cup, with Vintage Crop in 1993, a feat he repeated with Media Puzzle in 2005. But his best finish from seven previous Derby runners had been Casual Conquest in 2008.
Asked if the absence of the Epsom Derby on his record had been niggling him, Weld, 67, said: ‘I suppose it had.
‘It is a race I had always wanted to win and I have been very fortunate to win Group One races all around the world. The problem is, you don’t often have a horse good enough to
run in the race – let alone to win it.’
It was Port Douglas, one of the five O’Brien-trained runners in the 16strong line-up, who cut out the early running, followed closely by French raider Cloth Of Stars, who finished eighth, and the hard-pulling Massaat, who not surprisingly faded into ninth.
Idaho settled just behind the leaders and Smullen revealed he had used him as target. It meant he was always perfectly positioned.
In contrast, Ryan Moore and US Army Ranger were second last to emerge out of Tattenham Corner and forced to challenge widest of all in the middle of the track.
Moore said his mount, having only his third run, had been ‘babyish when pulled out’ and shown signs of inexperience.
Dettori made the same claim with Wings Of Desire.
Biggest disappointment of the race was the Jim Bolger-trained Moonlight Magic, who was last. His jockey, Kevin Manning, said his mount had become unbalanced on the Epsom gradients, particularly when the pace was turned up.
For Smullen, 39, an understated but never underrated jockey, things had gone to the script. He said: ‘It was one of those races when everything went to plan, which doesn’t often happen.’
The first four home could all meet again in the Dubai Duty Free Irish Derby at the Curragh on June 25.