On top of the world!
Major success in Australia and USA
TOP WEXFORD racing personalities, Aidan O’Brien and Jim Bolger, were centrally involved in the 160th running of the world famous Melbourne Cup on Tuesday, and some great success was leavened with a large measure of tragedy in a race run behind closed doors for the first time.
And in the Breeders Cup at Keeneland, Kentucky, O’Brien filled in a gap in his glittering CV when he won for the first time the $2m Grade 1 Turf mile after many tries, and did it in style with the first three home, led in by total outsider Order of Australia.
First, the Melbourne Cup, worth £2.3m to the winner. For the second time in the past three years the finish involved a battle between Aidan O’Brien and his son, Joseph, and the son came out on top once again.
Joseph won the race with Twilight Payment, a 25/1 outsider that made practically all the running in the 23-strong field on his 31st career outing, and staved off a strong challenge by Aidan’s fancied Tiger Moth.
Jim Bolger bred the seven-yearold winner at his Redmondstown stud in Oylegate out of his top sire, Teofilio, and the dam, Dream on Buddy, being foaled in May, 2013.
Jim trained him at his Coolcullen stable from debut in May of 2016 as a three-year-old and kept him busy at a high level until parting company to Australian owners, Lloyd and Nick Williams, and trainer Joseph O’Brien in 2018.
Twiglight Dream ran 23 times for Jim and was the model of consistency and was rarely out of the top three, winning five and coming second nine times. Jim has finished the season very strongly with his first Futurity Group 1 win with home-bred MacSwiney, and several other top level Group 1 breeding successes.
The O’Briens both watched the
race from home in the early hours of Tuesday morning as Joseph repeated his 2017 victory with Rekindling over Aidan’s Johannes Vermeer.
Joseph was represented down under by assistant trainer Mark Power, a native of Kildare who is enjoying a fabulous year in sport after being part of the Rathgarogue-Cushinstown squad which contested the All-Ireland Club Junior football final in Croke Park last January.
Mark, who previously played with Raheens in Kildare, came on in the 24th minute of that final, and he is a vital part of Joseph O’Brien’s team at Owning Hill in Piltown.
And the tragedy – Aidan’s 2019 Epsom Derby winner, Anthony Van Dyck, broke a leg in the home straight and had to be put down. It was the seventh fatality in the past eight years of the race, with Aidan also losing The Cliffsofmoher in 2018.
Aidan’s Wichita, 2,000 Guineas runner-up, was also a fatality a week earlier after suffering injury in a track work-out.
This latest fatality has led to calls for an enquiry into the high attrition rate in the race. Aidan paid
tribute to his fallen hero: ‘He was a good Derby winner and was a sound, lovely natured horse, tough and genuine. It was very sad to see that happen.’
He was warm in his praise of his son on his success. ‘It was incredible for Joseph. I’m delighted for him and everyone involved.’
The winner was ridden by local jockey, Jye McNeil, who was having his first ride in the race and he did a great job. Kerrin McEvoy could not be faulted on Tiger Moth who was having just his fifth race; drawn very wide, he got across smoothly and spared no effort. He was fined over €30,000 and banned for 13 meetings for his use of the whip.
Most of Aidan’s horses ran well at the two-day Breeders’ Cup extravaganza, highlighted by the 1-2-3 in his maiden win in the Turf Mile.
Order of Australia (73/1 in US, 40/1 here), bred by his wife, Annemarie, who still has a share in the horse, won against all the odds; he only got into the race due to a late withdrawal and started from the worse draw on the wide outside.
He was piloted by super-sub French ace, Pierre Charles Boudot, as Christoph Soumillon tested positive for Covid-19. In fact, unlucky Soumillon missed out on three winners on the night.
Boudot rode a brilliant race and took it up inside the final furlong and repelled the charge of the other two O’Brien runners, Circus Maximus (12/1) under Ryan Moore and Lope Y Fernandez (12/1) under Frankie Dettori by a neck and a length.
It was Aidan’s 13th Breeders’ Cup win and he came very close adding a couple more.
Dermot Weld and Colin Keane had maiden wins with super filly Tarnawa (3/1) who was taking a third Group 1 in a row in the Turf championship over a mile and a half. O’Brien’s Magical (15/8) was a hard driven second, beaten a length under Ryan Moore.
Aidan and Moore also got two seconds on Friday in the Juvenile Turf with Battleground (11/4f) which was left with an awful lot to do. ‘My horse ran super, very happy with him,’ was Moore’s comment.
Mother Earth (14/1) got second in the Juvenile Fillies’ Turf but this one never looked like getting to the front-running winner.