HORSE RACING:ONE DOESN'T get to be in charge of Europe's greatest racing empire by being unable to put in a full day's work but when that work involves racehorses Aidan O'Brien knows only too well that luck also plays a maddeningly major part in winning too.
Not for Ireland’s champion trainer the smug old golfer’s dismissal of the concept of luck with that old hoary refrain about the harder you work, the more successful you get.
Every day there are 86,400 seconds when a horse can stand on something sharp, take a funny step, breath in a rogue microbe, get a runny nose – the list of potential problems is never ending.
More than enough then to send any hint of complacency packing from O’Brien and the entire historic stables of Ballydoyle, especially when there are nearly a million and half seconds until the start of the Epsom Derby and you just happen to be in possession of an odds-on favourite you believe almost too good to be true.
The Coolmore syndicate of John Magnier and Co have a history of handing out rather grandiose names to some rather pedestrian runners but they look to have got Camelot down to a tee.
For over a decade and a half, O’Brien has been producing a conveyer belt of Classic talent for Coolmore but rarely has he been so loathe to tempt fate as he is about the unbeaten 2,000 Guineas winner.
Some of that might have to do with bitter experience where hyped potential superstars of the past failed to deliver on their potential. More might have to do with how his 18-year-old son Joseph just happens to be doing the steering. But perhaps most of all is the dread that something might go wrong precisely at the worst possible time.
Up to now Camelot has led a charmed existence, finding the act of running so easy he even defied his pedigree to win a Guineas so convincingly that talk of becoming the first since Nijinsky left Ballydoyle 42 years ago to complete British racing’s Triple Crown became widespread.
O’Brien has experienced enough Ballydoyle press days not to be dragged into that discussion but even a natural wariness with a hungry hack-pack yesterday couldn’t disguise the regard in which he holds Camelot.
The trainer tried hard to keep a lid on the expectation surrounding the colt that cost the syndicate 525,000 guineas, and is now potentially worth up to nine figures, as he chomped grass after his morning work-out yesterday.
“His breeders thought he was exceptional. The boys (owners) thought he was special at the sales. He is such a good-looking horse and such a good mover but usually those horses are too good to be true,” said O’Brien who still remembers his own first impression of the Montjeu colt.
“He went by me here, doing what the dressage people call an extended trot. Normally horses have to be made do that. He does it naturally. His movement is perfection,” he declared.
He was speaking on a morning when Investec, who sponsor the Derby and the Oaks on the first two days of June, brought an infestation of media to the world-famous gallops over which the two favourites for the Oaks, Kissed and Maybe, performed a leisurely canter.
A host of colts who also hold the Derby entry and have cut a swathe through the blue-riband trials this spring were also on show. One of them, Ernest Hemingway, will try and earn a ticket in Thursday’s Dante at York.
But even on a sun-kissed Tipperary morning with hundreds of millions worth of bloodstock on show, it was Camelot that grabbed every eye. Well, him and his jockey.
If Joseph has change from six foot, it ain’t much, which makes his feat of riding at 9st all the more remarkable. That he can do that, and still show the sort of big-race nerve that saw him come from almost last to first on Camelot in the Guineas, shows a raw talent commensurate with the horse underneath him.
“I was very worried going into the Guineas,” O’Brien Snr said. “About his first run of the season, that Montjeu had never sired a Group One winner at a mile; it all didn’t seem like the right thing to do. And then Joseph was riding him like a six-furlong horse.
“But it worked out great. The horse was beautifully relaxed, he came through horses, put his head down and fought and Joseph used the stick on both sides.
“As for Epsom so many things have to work. He has to cope with the day, the atmosphere, the undulations, everything. It has been such a fairytale all the way with him you’d be afraid something might go wrong. But all you can do is your best,” he added.
Not for nothing is “breed the best to the best and hope for the best” one of the hardiest credos in racing. Every horse at Ballydoyle is royally bred, several of them including Imperial Monarch, Astrology and Daddy Long Legs, could enter the Epsom picture as well. Certainly the ammunition is in place to emulate at Epsom the Classic double that O’Brien pulled off at Newmarket’s Guineas meeting earlier this month. But there’s no doubting who the star is.
One photographer angling for a better position to snap the gallops action yesterday was warned playfully by the trainer: “Just don’t bring down Camelot!” Given normal luck, it looks like nothing much will bring him down.
O'Brien not afraid to take on Frankel
AIDAN O’BRIEN will give his new recruit Excelebration another crack at Frankel in Saturday’s Lockinge Stakes at Newbury leaving So You Think to defend his Tattersalls Gold Cup crown the following weekend.
“We gave So You Think a bit of a break after Dubai and we’ll wait a bit longer with him. He’ll probably run in the Tattersalls,” O’Brien said yesterday.
Excelebration ran three times behind Frankel last year, ending up chasing him home in the QEII for former trainer Marco Botti. Transferred to O’Brien over the winter the colt won first time up for his new handler in the Gladness Stakes.
“He’s a very relaxed horse and good enough to compete. Marco Botti did a great job with him, but he’s a year older and has strengthened up,” O’Brien said.
“It will be interesting taking on Frankel, and if you know his Achilles heel, I wish you’d let me know!”
Twirl is set to fly the Ballydoyle flag in tomorrow’s Musidora at York while in the evening Was could earn an Oaks ticket alongside Maybe and Kissed in the Blue Wind Stakes at Naas.
“She was very forward but a shoe came off a horse she was working behind and cut her over the knee so we had to stitch her. But she’s fine again now,” O’Brien said.
Thomasgainsborough is one of the champion trainer’s lesser lights but could strike on better ground at Killarney tonight compared to the muck over which he floundered behind Goldoni at Epsom.
The former Coral Cup winner Carlito Brigante has been given a tough assignment by Gordon Elliott on his chasing debut tonight but he has the size and scope to be good at the new game.
Dermot Weld has landed the finale in the last three years and relies on the Gowran winner Olympiad.
The Real Article switches from hurdles but Parkers Mill has a rating to make him hard to beat.
