The first chapter of the inaugural Champions Weekend got a finish for the ages with The Grey Gatsby's dramatic defeat of Australia in Saturday evening's Qipco Irish Champion Stakes but even a vintage performance from Ryan Moore on his back doesn't seem enough to guarantee the winner justifiable spotlight exclusivity for such a superlative performance.
Even in defeat there appears to be no knocking Australia from centre stage with the focus still on Joseph O’Brien’s controversial ride on a colt rated the best he has ever had by his trainer Aidan O’Brien.
The expectations aroused by that statement have always meant especially close scrutiny of Australia’s entitlement to
“great” status. And while a narrow defeat to a French Derby winner is hardly a disgrace, it’s still hard to avoid the suspicion that the truly great rarely need excuses made for them.
Frankel received a spectacularly ill-judged ride from Tom Queally in the St James’s Palace Stakes of 2011 but still found a way to win. An awful lot went wrong for Sea The Stars in the 2009 Arc, yet he too wound up overcoming it all. Australia was unable to find a way on Saturday.
The mitigating factor in his defence is the way he was ridden and the 1lb overweight O’Brien weighed back in with compared to weighing out correctly at 9st. Because he weighed in less than 1.5lbs heavy, O’Brien escaped a penalty under Turf Club rules. For the ride, the court of public opinion is likely to be a lot less forgiving.
Ordinarily O'Brien's decision to race so wide might indicate a desire to find better ground but the general consensus appeared to be the Leopardstown going was close to ideal for top-class flat racing. Whatever the logic, Australia was set a major task, one that possibly required him to be just as good as his reputation suggested to overcome racing so wide.
An exact measurement of the ground he lost around the bend, compared to the route taken by The Grey Gatsby, is impossible but even O’Brien’s staunchest defender can hardly rule out it being more than a neck.
That the winner was ridden by perhaps the finest big-race rider in the world right now only focused more attention on the glaring differences in performance by the principal jockeys on Saturday. Trying to banish the memory of such a day to forget is likely to occupy O’Brien jnr’s mind for a lot longer.
O’Brien snr admitted yesterday to being “shocked” by Australia’s defeat and said that anything that could go wrong for his son, and the horse he rates so highly, did go wrong.
“We were in a nice position but the pace steadied. He was on the outside of Al Kazeem and couldn’t get in. He was trapped out there, so he had to go early,” the champion trainer reported before nominating Ascot’s Champion Stakes or the QEII as options for Australia’s next appearance.
The Grey Gatsby’s final attempt to hog the limelight for himself could also come in next month’s Champion at Ascot where Kevin Ryan’s star is likely to run into Free Eagle, another horse seemingly destined to operate in Australia’s shadow but one with the potential to definitively break out of it on the evidence of a stunning Group Three win on Saturday.
Longchamp’s Prix La Foret may be next for Fiesolana after her popular Coolmore Matron Stakes victory, a first Group One for Willie McCreery and Billy Lee.
“I’m overcome. What a horse and what a ride!” exclaimed McCreery who could have been forgiven for adding – what a day.
