The spectacular Royal Ascot show starts on Tuesday and firmly in the spotlight will be the famously “unshowy” Irish jockey Colin Keane.
Appointed number one in Europe to the Juddmonte organisation just last week, Ireland’s six-time champion will be under scrutiny throughout the five days of British racing’s showpiece event.
Pressure might indeed be a privilege in elite sport, but it can quickly become a burden too.
Racing history is littered with examples of a coveted position becoming too onerous. The great South African rider Michael Roberts never quite convinced when appointed number one to Sheikh Mohammed in the 1990s. Jamie Spencer lasted only a year at Ballydoyle.
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At 30, Keane is the same age as when compatriots Michael Kinane and Johnny Murtagh broke through on the world stage. He has been handed a glorious opportunity to do the same. But far from any gentle easing into the position, there could hardly be a deeper end to be thrown into than Royal Ascot.
Even his biggest chance of the day underlines how quickly fortunes can fluctuate. Kieran Shoemark went into last month’s 2,000 Guineas supremely confident of a potentially career-defining classic success on Field Of Gold.
He emerged defeated and frustrated, guilty of over-confidence in a narrow defeat by Ruling Court. Within days, he was fired from the job of number one to the Gosden team. Keane took over on Field Of Gold in the Irish Guineas, won easily and sealed his credentials for the Juddmonte job.
Just how fickle the big-race fates can be, though, won’t be lost on the rider. A day after Field Of Gold’s Guineas success at the Curragh, he endured a rare nightmare in the Tattersalls Gold Cup on White Birch, finding himself riding for luck and not getting any.
It’s an occupational hazard but one the very best avoid when it counts most. Delivering in the biggest races on the biggest stages is what defines the elite. Excuses can prove to be very expensive.
It’s why Ryan Moore has lasted longer at Ballydoyle than anyone else. His taciturn instincts are at odds with the most supreme showman of all, Frankie Dettori. But behind the histrionics, the Italian delivered at Ascot like no one else.
Keane is a cool customer who has delivered in Group One races around Europe and twice at the Breeders Cup in the US. His personality instincts lean more to Moore than Dettori. With the privilege of the pick of Juddmonte’s vast team in Britain, France and Ireland comes the responsibility to deliver results.
It means Keane is going to be firmly in the limelight, every move and manoeuvre examined closely by a global audience. It is an audience that might coldly consider how he has just a couple of Royal Ascot winners under his belt to date. The upside is how that statistic could quickly change.
Field Of Gold has been odds-on for the clash of Europe’s three major 2,000 Guineas winners in the St James’s Palace Stakes. Tuesday’s most valuable contest is the opening Queen Anne Stakes, which is worth almost €1 million. Keane rides Lead Artist. He won the Lockinge last month under Oisin Murphy.
Keane has five other rides on Tuesday but a good start for Juddmonte may prove to be even more than half the Royal Ascot battle.
No trainer has enjoyed more Royal Ascot glory than Aidan O’Brien. The Irishman has been top trainer for the week 12 times already and is odds-on again. In 2016, he saddled a record equalling seven winners through the week. Six more last year brought his overall tally to 91.
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In contrast, his National Hunt equivalent, Willie Mullins, has “only” 10 successes to his name on flat racing’s grandest stage. But even though Mullins isn’t contesting the Group One prizes on Tuesday, he too might feel the heat from an unusual spotlight.
Reaching High carries the colours of King Charles and Queen Camilla in the marathon Ascot Stakes and will be ridden by Moore. The first horse ever trained in Ireland for a reigning British monarch has already been heavily punted in ante-post betting. Mullins has won the Ascot Stakes four times previously. The prospect of royalty successfully teaming up with racing royalty brings an added layer of intrigue.
Irish-trained horses will line up in all seven races on day one, including the failed stallion Bucanero Fuerte in the big sprint, the King Charles III Stakes, formerly known as the King’s Stand Stakes.
It is the St James’s Palace Stakes, though, that supplies an intriguing clash of classic winners. The Ballydoyle team will hope their French Guineas hero Henri Matisse can trump both Field Of Gold and Ruling Court.
It is a scenario that mirrors last year’s St James’s Palace Stakes when all three Guineas winners clashed and Rosallion, the winner in Ireland, got revenge on his Newmarket conqueror Notable Speech. The French winner Metropolitan finished third.
In 2016, the Newmarket victor Galileo Gold beat O’Brien’s The Gurkha with Awtaad in third. If he is given a typically unflappable steer from Keane, Field Of Gold could well confirm himself the best of his generation.
If sentiment is behind Shoemark on Dancing Gemini in the Queen Anne, the hunch remains that Rosallion may improve past him. Earlier, a massive Coventry Stakes field could be dominated by Postmodern if the evidence of his spectacular Yarmouth debut last month is anything to go by.
Royal Ascot: 2.30 - Rosallion 3.05- Postmodern (Nap) 3.40 - Regional 4.20 - Field Of Gold 5.00 - Manxman 5.35 - Sons And Lovers 6.10 - My Mate Mozzie.
Nap and Double - Postmodern and Sons And Lovers
