Victoria Road will try to mark Aidan O’Brien’s return to Australia with Cox Plate glory

Long before most finish enjoying their Saturday morning lie-in, Aidan O’Brien could have enjoyed a particularly satisfying 19th Group One success of 2023.

Last year’s Breeders Cup Juvenile winner Victoria Road represents Ireland’s champion trainer in Australia’s most prestigious middle-distance prize, the Ladbrokes Cox Plate at Moonee Valley, which is off at 7.10am Irish-time.

Just a few minutes after they’re past the post in Melbourne, a 7.30am inspection at Doncaster will decide if Britain’s final Group One of the season can go ahead on Saturday afternoon.

Although racing had to be cancelled at the Yorkshire track on Friday, hopes are still high the Kameko Futurity card can be staged.

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O’Brien has won the mile contest a record 11 times in his career, including with some of his most famous subsequent classic stars.

Running on a bog a year ago didn’t prevent Auguste Rodin from developing into a dual-Derby hero this summer but conditions are sure to be similarly testing should racing get a green light.

Diego Velazquez, with James Doyle substituting for the suspended Ryan Moore, will be joined by his stable companion Battle Cry in the eight-runner heat.

After an impressive Curragh debut, Diego Velazquez didn’t convince everyone with a narrow defeat of Capulet at Leopardstown and the son of Frankel is unproven on very testing ground, unlike Godolphin’s Ancient Wisdom who impressed at Newmarket a fortnight ago in the Autumn Stakes.

“Hopefully the 7.30 inspection is only precautionary,” said Doncaster’s clerk of the course Paul Barker. “If the weather forecast is accurate, we should be fine in the morning.”

Doncaster is a comparative home game for O’Brien, unlike Moonee Valley, although he won the 2014 Cox Plate with Adelaide. Nevertheless, victory for Victoria Road would be significant given a rather turbulent relationship with Australia over the years.

The Ballydoyle team are back three years after Epsom Derby winner Anthony Van Dyck sustained fatal injuries in the Melbourne Cup, a race in which stable companion Tiger Moth finished runner-up to Joseph O’Brien’s Twilight Payment.

O’Brien snr was also second to his son’s Rekindling in the 2017 Melbourne Cup and a year later his Derby runner-up Cliffs Of Moher was also fatally injured in the big race.

Following Anthony Van Dyck’s demise, stringent new vetting procedures on international runners were set up by local authorities determined to avoid welfare criticisms in Australia.

They included nuclear scintigraphy scans that O’Brien was adamant made it all but impossible for him to travel horses down under given the training interruptions required to carry them out.

With those rules eased this year Victoria Road, who will continue his career for new connections down under after this weekend, flies the Irish flag in a 12-runner race worth $5 million (€3 million.)

Those with longer memories will also recall O’Brien’s angry reaction after the 2008 Melbourne Cup when ordered back to the track by the stewards to answer queries about team tactics and whether jockeys on his three runners had taken all reasonable measures to finish in the best possible place.

Victoria Road, the mount of top local rider Blake Shinn, is one of a trio of three-year-olds in the Cox Plate which is topped by Hong Kong champion Romantic Warrior.

Among the local defenders for a race won by Ireland’s State Of Rest in 2021 are Mr Brightside and the reigning Melbourne Cup champion, Gold Trip.

It begins a run of major global dates for O’Brien’s team which reached 18 top-fight victories for the year to date with Los Angeles landing last weekend’s Criterium de Saint-Cloud.

Auguste Rodin (Turf) tops O’Brien’s list of contenders for next weekend’s Breeders Cup at Santa Anita after Paddington’s retirement to stud was confirmed by Coolmore on Friday. The prolific Group One winner misses out on the Breeders Cup due to a respiratory infection.

The Irish man scored a hat-trick at the 2022 Breeders Cup which brought his overall tally for US racing’s shop-window event to 16.

Later next month Continuous is on target to try and break O’Brien’s duck in the Japan Cup where the Leger winner will attempt to overcome the world’s highest-rated horse, Equinox. Hong Kong’s International Carnival in December is another potential end-of-year target.

The mile-and-a-half Turf is likely to be a final career start for Auguste Rodin who burst on to the Group One scene with his Futurity success 12 months ago. The colt has not been in action since beating older horses in last month’s Irish Champion Stakes at Leopardstown.

“We’re very happy with him, everything has gone well. He’s had a nice long lead-up into this race and it’s a race we always thought would really suit since the last day.

“Obviously Leopardstown is a flat, left-handed track and we thought and hoped it would set him up nicely for the Breeders’ Cup given we’ve had our eye on it all year. Hopefully, everything goes well for the next few days,” O’Brien said.