Now he’ll bid to conquer Everest
US NAVY FLAG reinvented himself as a sprinter to lift the Group 1 July Cup at Newmarket, and will now bid to reach Everest and land the world’s richest turf race.
After racking up a rare double in the six-furlong Middle Park Stakes and the Dewhurst Stakes over seven at Newmarket’s Rowley Mile track last autumn, the Aidan O’brien-trained son of War Front was aimed at the top one-mile prizes this spring.
But defeats when fifth in the Poule d’essai des Poulains at Longchamp, second in the Irish 2,000 Guineas at the Curragh and ninth in the St James’s Palace Stakes at Royal Ascot persuaded O’brien to bring the three-yearold back to sprint distances. And the plan yielded an immediate return as Ryan Moore’s mount, sent off at 8-1, made the running over all bar a few yards of the final six furlongs of the Summer Course, to deny last year’s third Brando by a length and three-quarters.
“Where he threw us was when he won a Dewhurst, making the running. When he did that, we said we had to give him a chance at a mile,” said O’brien (right), who will aim US Navy Flag at The Everest – a six-furlong contest worth £5.5million and run at Randwick in Sydney on October 13.
“He ran a huge race in the Irish Guineas – he was absolutely out on his head the last furlong but still kept trying,” added O’brien, winning the July Cup for the fourth time after Stravinsky (1999), Mozart (2001) and Starspangledbanner (2010). “Then we had another go at Ascot and said, ‘It’s not fair to him – we have to go back to sprinting’. “You could see the field closing on him, but we knew the one thing he wasn’t going to do was lie down. “For him to have such a tough campaign as a three-year-old – and to go back to sprinting after running over a mile – is unbelievable PAUL MULRENNAN will miss Glorious Goodwood and York’s Ebor fixture after suffering a triple fracture of his back in a gallops fall yesterday. He was taken to Darlington Memorial Hospital and his Richard Hale said: “He’ll be out for the foreseeable.”