Dermot Weld and Pat Smullen© Photo Healy Racing
Prior to Saturday’s Epsom Derby, 18 horses trained in Ireland had won racing’s greatest classic. The 1907 hero Orby apart, the others had been produced by just half a dozen trainers, an elite comprised of figures ranging from legendary to enigmatic, even mysterious, all of whom however possessed of that priceless capacity to make top-class racehorses run fast. No one can argue Dermot Weld isn’t worthy of inclusion in such an elite.
Pat Smullen isn’t champion jockey without having exceptional timing and he proved that again on Harzand. Amidst the euphoria of a dramatic success in the race that matters most of all, he was also mightily impressive in immediately referencing the man he called the greatest trainer in the world.
If such labels are impossible to prove, the scale of Weld’s achievements at home and around the globe over four decades, in every kind of race, elite and otherwise, flat and jumps, mean his name is an automatic inclusion when such academic and futile arguments are played out, wherever they might be. So Weld finally landing the Derby, 31 years after his first attempt, feels only appropriate.
It wasn’t a given. Paddy ‘Darkie’ Prendergast for instance is one outstanding figure who never managed it. How many of his other top triumphs would he have swapped to win one Derby?
Weld began his training career in competition with Prendergast and Vincent O’Brien and has stood the test of time so well he’s still serving it up to the current Ballydoyle behemoth. He is closing in on 4,000 winners. Prior to Saturday how many of those would he have swapped to get on the ultimate roll-of-honour?
In the 31 years since Theatrical finished seventh, Weld watched the rise of Aidan O’Brien’s hegemony, and also two of his contemporaries in a vintage crop of Irish training accomplishment, John Oxx and Jim Bolger, carve their names in Derby history. He would never let on but Weld, the man who changed the face of world racing, must have felt that keenly. Now he doesn’t have to.
He remains an intriguing character. It is 16 years since Weld broke JJ Parkinson’s record for winners trained in Ireland, after which he responded to this corner’s enquiry about his future with: “There's a lot of work and stress involved in this job and I value my health. I work seven days a week and start at 6.40 a.m. every morning. It's continual stress and now that I've done this I will reduce things.”
Maybe he believed it at the time. Practically no one else did, all too aware of the intense competitive drive often hidden behind that suave urbanity. Weld is a man to provoke opinion: what there is rare racing unanimity on though is that Harzand’s Epsom Derby is the top of a sweet career cherry that makes his trainer one of Irish racing’s truly totemic figures.
His jockey isn’t bad either. Others may disagree but to me it looked like Harzand was at pretty much the pin of his collar the whole way round, changed legs a couple of times, got into a few bumps and scrapes and yet Smullen still managed to smuggle him into a position to challenge Idaho in the straight.
It says a lot about the jockey’s skill but also the colt’s resolution. The buzz word around Epsom is ‘travelling.’ It looked some of the time like he wasn’t. Yet Harzand pulled through, and then pulled away from US Army Ranger in the last 100 yards, and all of it with a foot issue that could easily have seen him miss the race completely. There may have been classier Derby winners but few with such guts to go with the class.
However if the Derby was admirable in so many ways, Minding’s Oaks was remarkable. Little wonder she’s the one topping some Arc betting lists because this is filly with both class and guts to spare. And yes we are plucking at a one-string banjo with this but the ‘what if’ question will always linger about what she might have done against the colts in the Derby.
Not since New Approach somehow overcame a rank reluctance to settle has an Epsom classic been won in such unlikely style. Ryan Moore got it in the neck from quite a few for his ride on Minding although the problem really looked to boil down to Harold McMillan’s famous old line about ‘events, dear boy.’ If he’d secured a trouble-free run, nothing would have been said.
Instead he got a nightmare and while Aidan O’Brien’s post-race comment about Moore’s brilliant ride seemed a major stretch, the jockey himself did at least concede that Minding got him out of trouble. And what she proved without question is that she stays a mile and a half because the Oaks ground was significantly more testing than what the Derby colts had to handle.
And finally, anyone under illusions about the financial realities with regard to racecourses were surely disabused with news of Tramore’s planned €1 million redevelopment which is due to be completed by 2020.
HRI is providing over €400,000 in grand aid and the track authorities are confident of covering the balance over three years without having to darken the door of any bank manager, relying instead on television rights money.
It’s a lovely situation to be in but it does rather put in perspective any onus on any racecourse to get too worked up about a hundred here or another hundred there paying or not paying through the gate.
And it makes it no surprise to hear how Wexford will be looking for more National Hunt fixtures in the future after confirmation that flat racing is no longer tenable there.
