Baaeed will skip Saturday week’s Royal Bahrain Irish Champion Stakes and wait instead for a prospective tilt at the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in October.
Confirmation that the world’s top-rated racehorse is set to end his career in Paris, a race for which he will have to be supplemented, comes as a blow to next week’s Longines Irish Champions Weekend.
Hopes had grown that Baaeed might be the star attraction at Irish flat racing’s €3.9 million shop-window fixture which takes place at Leopardstown and the Curragh.
The €1 million Irish Champion Stakes was memorably won by Baseed’s sire Sea The Stars in 2009 en route to ending his career in style in the Arc a few weeks later. However, connections of a colt who has drawn comparisons to both Sea The Stars and Frankel on the back of a superb win at York earlier this month have opted to bypass Dublin in favour of going straight to Paris if ground conditions there are suitable.
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If they prove too to be too testing at Longchamp, Baaeed will finish his racing career in the Champion Stakes at Ascot.
The unbeaten star is the new 2-1 Arc favourite where he would tackle a mile-and-a-half [12 furlongs] for the first time.
“He is not going to run in the Irish Champion. Sheikha Hissa said she and the family wanted to have one more run, either in the Arc or the Champion Stakes,” said Angus Gold, spokesman of the Shadwell ownership, on Sunday.
“It would be lovely for anyone to have an Arc winner, of course it would be wonderful, but equally it would be wonderful to have a Champion Stakes winner.”
Baaeed had been as short as 1-2 in some ante-post lists for Leopardstown. In his absence the French Derby and Eclipse winner Vadeni has been cut a to a general 6-4 favourite for the Irish Champion, a race his trainer Jean Claude Rouget won in 2016 with Almanzor.
Baaeed will need to be supplemented into the Arc at a cost of €120,000 but much will depend on likely ground conditions at Longchamp on the first Sunday in October.
“There is no rush to make the call. We don’t have to technically supplement him, if we decide to go for the Arc, until September 28th. Let’s see what the weather does to us in the next month or so and see what is running in the Arc and everything. If we get a wet autumn — and who knows — but if we get a wet autumn and it was going to be heavy ground in Paris, then it would be less likely. Equally, it could be very heavy ground at Ascot. How many runners in the Arc would also come into the calculations [because of the potential of a bad draw],” said Gold.
Luxembourg set for Irish Champion Stakes
Sunday’s news comes on the back of another high-profile defection from Champions Weekend after the season’s top two-year-old, Little Big Bear, was described as unlikely to make the Vincent O’Brien National Stakes at the Curragh due to a foot problem.
Top Irish handler Aidan O’Brien has confirmed Luxembourg is on course to tackle Vadeni in the Irish Champion Stakes. O’Brien already has a record 10 wins to his credit in the renewal.
Luxembourg returned to action earlier this month with a narrow defeat of Insinuendo in the Royal Whip at the Curragh.
“Everything has been good with him and I’m very happy with him since his last run. So far so good. He was just ready to go racing, we were so delighted he got to the races and then we were delighted he had to fight. He had to run the last three furlongs hard because Willie’s filly (Insinuendo) took him on, which was good. We’re delighted with him and everything has been good since,” said O’Brien.
