Ryan Moore and Joseph O'Brien drive for the line in the Qipco Champion Stakes© Photo Healy Racing
First things first: if Australia had held on to win the Irish Champion Stakes by a neck, instead of getting beaten a neck, nothing would have been said about Joseph O’Brien’s ride. Winners get forgiven everything. He might have even got praised for keeping things simple, not getting in the way of a great horse doing his stuff. And that would have been rubbish. Jumping on bandwagons is never very seemly but any kind of reasonable big-race analysis says this was a stinker.
To his credit the jockey has adopted a straight-forward ‘it-won’t-happen-again’ line. Pretending the torrent of flak might be coming from grandstand jockeys shouting through their pockets would have been an insult to everyone’s intelligence. O’Brien has enjoyed a charmed career as a professional to date. But his reaction to this will be a significant test of his credentials.
Frankie Dettori once quipped that any ‘This Is Your Life’ appearance he might make will probably include Swain clumping on to remind him of that Breeders Cup horror-show in 1998. Every jockey gets it in the neck sometimes. Vincent O’Brien reputedly had steam coming out his ears about Piggott’s Arc effort on Nijinsky, and Alleged in the Leger. The key to setbacks is in the reaction to them, and O’Brien has always looked a mentally tough young man.
The fact O’Brien weighed in 1lb overweight after the Champion Stakes could ultimately turn out to be the most significant part of all this. The feat this six-footer pulls off in boiling his frame down can never be underestimated. It is a marvel of willpower. Aidan O’Brien suggested at the weekend that the weigh-in rules mean any overweight by his son could have involved a mere ounce or two.
But the bald fact remains that the jockey weighed in heavy after one of the most prestigious races of the year, a race he lost by only a neck. Maybe time will allow O’Brien’s weight to settle but time could just as easily make the struggle untenable in any kind of long term scenario. Putting up overweight is simply not a runner when it comes to major races where the margins between victory and defeat are wafer-thin.
Just to compound a nightmare day it had to be Ryan Moore taking advantage of Australia’s eye-poppingly wide passage. If there’s a better jockey riding anywhere in the world right now, then he’s a great indeed. It now looks safe to pin the ‘g’ word to the truculent Englishman. O’Brien might yet be a great jockey, but he isn’t yet. O’Brien is good. Moore is starting to bear comparison to the all-time greats.
Talking about great and good, it’s starting to look like we can put the ‘great’ tag away in terms of Australia. He’s obviously top class, but excuses don’t usually need to be employed for the true legends of the sport. He was set a massive task by his jockey at Leopardstown. But Frankel got an even worse stinker from Tom Queally in the St James’s Palace – and still found a way to win.
Those in charge of ‘Champions Weekend’ might be worth rubbing ahead of the next Lotto-pick because they are clearly on the right side of the fates right now.
Irish racing’s inaugural flagship event was a triumph. It’s a long time since either Leopardstown or the Curragh hosted flat meetings that buzzed to the extent that this one did. In fact both crowds felt bigger than the official 13,190 and 10,978 returned. The weather could hardly have been better. The results banished any fears about a possible Coolmore monopoly. Everything panned out perfectly.
From an attendance point of view, any whispered asides about the numbers of freebies, or supposed compulsory appearances requested by industry bigwigs, smack of sour-grapes. Whatever the reason for people showing up, they did show up. The challenge now will be to build on this, and maintain this initial momentum. But as starts go, this was hard to beat.
From another attendance point of view, it hardly pees on the parade to point out how a cumulative crowd of just over 24,000 between the two days is well short of what will turn up at Listowel this week for Ladies Day alone, never mind the near-34,000 that showed up for the Galway Hurdle. Amidst the general feel-good factor, it’s no harm to maintain a little context.
In fact the real ‘Champions Weekend’ test could come once the novelty and the determination to be seen to back it, has worn off, not to mention when it’s peeing rain. Hopefully, though, the upward momentum continues. However any ideas that the job is now done are not on. Preaching to the unconverted is still a mammoth task. It was instructive to listen to the sports news on a national radio station on Saturday morning and listen to long spiels about Connacht rugby, the Premiership, and golf, before a reference to Granddukeoftuscany lining up in the Doncaster Leger. The bulletin wound up with “and there’s racing at home in Leopardstown.” That was it.
However the importance of a good start can hardly be over-estimated and ‘Champions Weekend’ has got that with a vengeance. The credibility boost from having half the races won by cross-channel horses is especially huge given the perception out there that this is Coolmore’s backyard. Yet again the action out on the track proved things are rarely so straight-forward.
Talking about great and good, there’s no doubt Frankie Dettori’s career makes him a great of the game. But the nagging fear is that the past tense is becoming more and more appropriate. Treve getting stuffed in Vermeille may have felt like vindication for the Italian but getting jocked off for Thierry Jarnet is not good. This is the same Jarnet that looked like he was simply along for the ride in last year’s Arc.
