Joseph O’Brien doubles up as he pursues a ‘Spring Slam’ in Caulfield Cup

Joseph O’Brien’s impact on Australian racing is already considerable but the young Irish trainer has a remarkable ‘Spring Slam’ in his sights in Melbourne this weekend.

O’Brien’s pair Okita Soushi and Valiant King are being targeted at Saturday morning’s €3 million (Aus$5 million) Caulfield Cup.

The historic 1½ mile handicap is one of the three races regarded as the pinnacle of racing achievement during the Australian Spring carnival programme. The two others, the Melbourne Cup and the Cox Plate, take place in the coming weeks at Flemington and Moonee Valley respectively.

O’Brien has twice landed the Melbourne Cup with Rekindling (2017) and Twilight Payment (2020) while in 2021 his star performer State Of Rest pulled off a dramatic victory in the Cox Plate.

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In addition to the Golden Slipper, the famous two-year-old contest run in Sydney, the three races run in Victoria make up what is known as Australian racing‘s Grand Slam.

At just 30, the Irishman’s success Down Under has been notable and he hopes to be doubly represented this Saturday in Caulfield.

On Tuesday, both Okita Soushi and Valiant King looked like making the final cut of 18 runners for the race although final declarations have yet to be made for one of the great spectacles of Victorian racing’s Spring carnival.

“They are very good. They’ve been training well and seem happy, and everything’s gone good so far, so we’re hopeful now that they’ll both get in.

“They did a strong piece of work on Saturday and other than that it’s mostly been nice canters every day,” O’Brien’s representative, Sean Corby, said in Melbourne.

“They both ran at Ascot in big fields and both ran well, so that should be fine and hopefully they should handle the track and like a bit of good ground as well.

“I think Okita Soushi, by the sounds of it, will probably go on to run in the Melbourne Cup if he gets in, and I think at the moment Valiant King might just run in the Caulfield Cup and that might be it for this year.

“They’ve both got light weights, so hopefully the two of them could run well and it’s hard to split them on what they’ve been doing here,” he added.

Okita Soushi landed the Duke of Edinburg Stakes at Royal Ascot in June where Valiant King was a slightly unlucky runner-up to Desert Hero in the King George V Stakes.

Valiant King finished out of the frame behind Adelaide River on his last start at the Irish Champions Festival. Okita Soushi’s only subsequent run was when third to Shamida in the Curragh’s Leger Trial.

O’Brien’s Australian raiding party has already been in action this month although Buckaroo could finish only seventh in last Saturday’s King Charles III Stakes at Randwick in Sydney.He has tried before to strike in the Caulfield Cup but Buckhurst could finish only seventh in 2020.

That was a vintage renewal of the race where the local star Verry Elleegant held off the ill-fated Epsom Derby hero Anthony Van Dyck who failed by just a neck to defy both topweight and a wide draw.

The latest Irish hopes are as low as 14-1 in some betting lists for the weekend although it is the English contender West Wind Blows that’s fighting it out for favouritism with the reigning Melbourne Cup champion Gold Trip.

It is 25 years since the English-trained Taufan’s Melody took the Caulfield Cup for export and it has been won by a handful of overseas horses since then. They included France’s Dunaden who scored in 2012, a year after he’d landed the Melbourne Cup.

The Caulfield Cup holds Group One status and the O’Brien team could also have top-flight ambitions later on Saturday at Ascot’s British Champions Day.

Above The Curve is an 8-1 shot with some firms for the 1½ mile Filly & Mare contest. Last year’s ‘Alary’ winner was sixth to Warm Heart in the Prix Vermeille on her last start at Longchamp last month.

O’Brien has a typically strong team for Wednesday’s domestic action in Navan with eight runners set to take their chance. They include Hasshoffman and Answer Me Nay in a juvenile maiden although it is the Ballydoyle representative Emperor Of Rome that looks the one to beat.

Seamus Heffernan’s mount beat only one home in Saturday’s Birdcatcher in Naas but suffered significant interference. His previous run behind Pipsy at the Curragh suggests he can dominate this.

Heffernan is also on board Oakley in a later handicap where even topweight might not stop Tony Mullins’s German import. A beaten favourite on his Irish debut in Cork, Oakley’s victory in his native Germany last year indicates an extra quarter mile should help him.