RACING:BEFORE YESTERDAY'S Etihad Airways Irish 1,000 Guineas the stage looked set up perfectly for another milestone moment in Aidan O'Brien's momentous career: instead it was Mick Channon and champion apprentice jockey Martin Harley who broke their Classic duck in style with the 16 to 1 shot Samitar.
Harley (22), from Letterkenny in Co Donegal, succeeded where the world famous Olivier Peslier and Jamie Spencer had failed, in guiding Samitar to a Curragh defeat of two other outsiders, Ishvana and Princess Sinead.
The hot-favourite, Homecoming Queen, attempting to follow up her nine-length Newmarket Guineas rout earlier in the month, could only manage fourth, preventing the father-son team of Aidan and Joseph O’Brien from completing a Group One hat-trick over the weekend.
Earlier in the day So You Think had romped home in the Tattersalls Gold Cup to add to Saturday’s 2,000 Guineas success with Power. That had been the champion trainer’s 27th Irish Classic victory, equalling the record of his Ballydoyle predecessor Vincent O’Brien, and served up a perfect opportunity for Homecoming Queen to gild a further top-flight win with even more significance.
O’Brien is now on the 199 mark for Group One victories worldwide. But Homecoming Queen didn’t take her cue. The magic 200 will have to wait a little – perhaps until Camelot lines up in this Saturday’s Epsom Derby.
The novelty of Samitar’s success for both Harley and Channon was notable for the contrasting manners in which they arrived at Classic glory.
Channon, the former England football international, has repeatedly proved his racing credentials over the years but has also experienced intense frustration on some big days, none more so than during Youmzain’s streak of three consecutive runner-up placings in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.
Channon had won a German Guineas but he dismissed that yesterday with typical bluntness – “it doesn’t really count”. He had also been forthright in his views on how Messers Peslier and Spencer had messed up on Samitar in her first two starts of the year, including in the French Guineas. So he turned to Harley.
Champion apprentice in Britain last season, just 18 months after leaving a four-year stint with Jim Bolger, Harley grabbed his chance in style on his first Classic ride. Samitar cruised in the slipstream of Homecoming Queen and La Collina in the early stages and conclusively held off the challenge of the Ballydoyle third-string Ishvana by a length and a half.
“Just to get a ride like this in a Classic was unbelievable,” Harley said. “But the boss has been so good to me since I went over. It’s an amazing feeling to win a Guineas.”
Ten years after winning a Moyglare at the Curragh with Mail The Desert, Channon relished yesterday’s success and said: “Aidan knows all about winning Classics. This is my first. And we deserve it. We’ve been hitting the post a lot!”
If the 1,000 didn’t go quite to script for the O’Brien camp, there remains a remorseless momentum building up behind this weekend’s Epsom Classics where Camelot is a red-hot Derby favourite and both Maybe and Kissed give Ballydoyle a major shout in Friday’s Oaks.
“They’ll all get their scopes and bloods done on Monday and Tuesday and then we’ll decide on who goes to Epsom,” said O’Brien who will consider Royal Ascot’s St James’s Palace Stakes for Power.
That colt pounced late in Saturday’s colts Classic to beat Foxtrot Tango and Reply, providing his trainer with an eighth win in the race and matching his Ballydoyle predecessor in Irish Classic wins.
It took “MV” O’Brien 35 years (1953-1988) to complete his tally: “AP” has managed it in a scarcely believable 15.
Another Royal Ascot-bound horse is So You Think, who merely had a good workout at 2 to 11 odds to beat Famous Name in the Tattersalls Gold Cup. The Prince of Wales Stakes is his likely target next month. “We hopefully will be able to run him in the Eclipse too, before he goes into quarantine to start as a stallion in Australia,” said O’Brien who saddled Lines of Battle to make a winning debut in the juvenile maiden.
A 10th Irish Derby will be in the all-conquering Ballydoyle’s sights at the end of June but a new rival presented himself with a vengeance yesterday as Speaking Of Which turned the Gallinule Stakes into a nine-length rout.
“I put a visor on him to sharpen him up as he is a big, idle horse. I did the same with other Moyglare horses, like Go and Go, and Brief Truce, and when he worked in them, the further he went, the better he went,” trainer Dermot Weld said.
Johnny Murtagh made a bold bid to land the mile-and-a-half handicap on the front-running Royal Diamond but was denied in the shadow of the post by the 14 to 1 shot Midnight Soprano.
