O’BRIEN: LONGER TRIP IS BIGGEST WORRY
AIDAN O’BRIEN admits Camelot will be taken out of his comfort zone when he tries to become the first Triple Crown winner for 42 years in the Ladbrokes St Leger on Saturday. The sponsors make the colt, who has won the 2,000 Guineas over a mile and Derby over a mile a half, a 1-3 chance to follow in the footsteps of Nijinsky, whose 1970 exploits are celebrated in a statue at O’Brien’s Ballydoyle stable in Co Tipperary. Ten potential rivals have been left in the Doncaster race which O’Brien is trying to win for a fourth time. They include three colts, Dartford, Michelangelo and Great Voltigeur winner Thought Worthy, trained by John Gosden, who has won the last two runnings of the oldest Classic, plus David Lanigan’s Main Sequence, runner-up to Camelot in the Derby. The one mile, six furlongs and 132 yards of the Leger will be a new challenge for Camelot, the mount of O’Brien’s 19-year-old son Joseph. O’Brien, who will become the first trainer to win all five British Classics in a season if Camelot delivers, said: ‘He is built more like a miler, he is round and strong, not lean and angular. That is a little thing that would be in your mind. ‘Everyone has to do what suits their horse. They will obviously try to expose his weaknesses but we do not know what they are. ‘Lester (Piggott) says the Leger was nearly two miles. You are asking a Guineas winner to run that far. You are going to pull him way beyond his comfort zone. ‘They nearly have to be Gold Cup horses to get that trip.’