Highs and lows for O'Brien

Aidan O'Brien did not hang around at Arlington Park on Saturday night. No sooner had Volponi, a 43 to 1 outsider, galloped home clear of a field including Hawk Wing, who finished seventh, than O'Brien was on a plane back to Ireland. It seemed he could not get away quickly enough - despite winning a $2million race, the Breeders' Cup Turf with High Chaparral - on an afternoon that had promised much more. From Greg Wood in Chicago

His Ballydoyle stable commands European racing from one side of the continent to the other.

Perhaps we have got so used to it that it seemed logical to think he might clean up in Chicago in much the same manner. Yet any winner on the Breeders' Cup card is a mighty achievement. A return of a win, an unlucky second and a third place with Hold That Tiger in the Juvenile was a good day's work all the same.

Another positive to take away from Arlington was the fact that High Chaparral is expected to race on next season, presumably with the aim of adding a 10-furlong Group One success to the Derby winner's three this season at a mile and a half.

It took a while for Mick Kinane to get High Chaparral running on Saturday, but when he did, his surge to the lead was irresistible. "He is lazy," the jockey said, "and you really have to get after him. He really let it go, and he's the kind of horse that has loads saved. He's all class."

Hold That Tiger, too, will be a power in the sport next year, perhaps as early as the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs in May.

His performance in the Juvenile followed the theme for many of the Irish and British runners on Saturday, as a slow start left him with plenty to do around the tight Arlington oval. At the first bend of the nine-furlong race, Hold That Tiger and his two stable-companions, Tomahawk and Van Nistelrooy, filled the last three places, and coming out of the turn, Hold That Tiger was almost losing touch.

That he could then find the speed and courage to run on into third behind Bob Baffert's Vindication was, in its way, almost as remarkable as the ground-eating charge of Rock Of Gibraltar earlier in the day, and its significance was not lost on the local judges. Hold That Tiger was, in many eyes, the moral winner. He just needs to learn how to get out of the gates.

"He wasn't on the ball like the American horses," Kieren Fallon, his jockey, said, "but he came running at the end." And how. "It was a totally new experience," O'Brien said. "I would love to think that he could be a Kentucky Derby horse next year." O'Brien may not have taken the Breeders' Cup by storm, but he still thoroughly outperformed the British contingent at the meeting.

Michael Stoute's Golan ran no sort of race behind High Chaparral in the Turf, while Luca Cumani's Gossamer was fifth to Starine in the Filly & Mare Turf. Islington did best, finishing third in the same race after being crossed at the start.

"A horse cut in front of me and it cost me the race," Fallon, her jockey, said, though Bobby Frankel, who both trains and owns Starine, would surely beg to differ.

Frankel saddled Banks Hill to finish second in the same race, and later Medaglio D'Oro, the runner-up in the $4million Classic. Yet the Hall of Famer's runner had no answer to the stretch acceleration of Volponi, whose trainer, 77-year-old Philip Johnson, bred the Classic winner from a mare who cost $5,000.

Johnson's voice was a barely audible croak at the post-race press conference. He has an allergy, apparently, although he said with a wink that his doctor puts it down to "the accumulated dust of 60 years spent around racetracks."

Volponi paid $89.00 for a $2 stake, but his victory was no surprise to his trainer. "All week," he said, "when my wife's been hollering at me (they were married 57 years ago yesterday), I've said, 'wait until the three-sixteenths pole on Saturday. Then you'll be proud of me.' And you know, she was."

Also proud was winning jockey Jose Santos, who had endured tough times before this glorious success.

"In the '80s I remember I was at the top for five, six years, and then I had a terrible fall in the '90s and my business went down terribly," said the Chilean-born rider.

Guardian Service