Racing

Being No 2 rider to Aidan O’Brien looks like paying off for Wayne Lordan

Group One winner Los Angeles puts Epsom credentials on the line in Derby Trial at Leopardstown

Wayne Lordan: some very fancy prices about the jockeys’ championship might yet look generous should he manage to get some momentum going. Photograph: Bryan Keane/Inpho

Brian O'Connor
Sat May 11 2024 - 06:00

The plusses of being No 2 jockey to Aidan O’Brien are apparent over this weekend’s domestic action with Wayne Lordan set for a dozen Ballydoyle rides.

Séamus Heffernan’s decision to ride freelance this season has seen Lordan climb the Ballydoyle pecking order into an enviable role that over decades delivered Heffernan one of the most glittering big race CVs in the sport.

Lordan has already had big-race success for O’Brien but with Ryan Moore at Lingfield on Saturday, and on Classic duty in Paris on Sunday, he gets the benefit of both quality and quantity.

Significantly he also has three outside rides over the action at Naas and Leopardstown. Since Lordan is famously able to get down to low weights, some very fancy prices about the jockeys’ championship might yet look generous should he manage to get some momentum going.

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Saturday’s Naas feature is the Group Three Al Shira’aa Jannash Rose Stakes where Flight Of Fancy is the O’Brien representative.

The fact she’s still a maiden and is still pushed into such company won’t be lost on many, although perhaps another daughter of Galileo, Ger Lyons’s Madam Celeste, a Dundalk maiden winner, might emerge on top.

There are a trio of Group Three contests at Leopardstown a day later, highlighted by the Cashel Palace Derby Trial, where Lordan has a first racecourse ride on Los Angeles.

This programme’s traditional clash with the French Guineas resulted in Heffernan winning the Trial on superstar names such as Galileo, High Chaparral, Dylan Thomas and Fame And Glory over the years.

The latter won in 2009, having landed the Criterium De Saint-Cloud as a two-year old. That’s the same contest Los Angeles scored in last October and the Camelot colt is as short as 14-1 for Derby glory at Epsom next month.

He is joined in Sunday’s five-runner heat by stable companion Euphoric, although it is another Coolmore runner, Bremen, that may prove the real trial tackle of Los Angeles’ Derby credentials.

Winning the Goffs Millions by six lengths on her debut ensured immediate star status for One Look, who is ante-post favourite in some lists for the Irish 1,000 Guineas later this month.

Considering her 1-20 ‘SP’ there were plenty prepared to be unimpressed by her comeback victory at Cork. But Paddy Twomey’s filly puts her unbeaten record on the line in the first of Sunday’s Group Three contests, where she sports tongue-strap for the first time.

Lordan’s mount Buttons has nowhere near the same profile but ran a decent third to One Look’s stable companion A Lilac Rolla here a month ago and should progress from that.

The €50,000 Killarney National features Sunday’s action in the Kingdom while there is also a Saturday National Hunt card in Cork.

The bumper at Mallow includes a racecourse debut by the Emmet Mullins-trained Churchfield Sunset, a half-sister to no less than the jumps game’s rising superstar, Ballyburn. Earlier, Rosalys looks one to note in a mares’ maiden hurdle for Henry de Bromhead.

Brian O'Connor

Brian O'Connor

Brian O'Connor is the racing correspondent of The Irish Times. He also writes the Tipping Point column

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