Grey Swallow swoops for Derby delight

RACING: Grey Swallow completed one of the Curragh's most remarkable comeback stories with a scintillating success in yesterday's Budweiser Irish Derby.

Under an inspired ride from Pat Smullen, last season's champion two-year-old stunned the Epsom Derby hero North Light by half-a-length, with the 150 to 1 outsider Tycoon a length-and-a-half further back in third.

A huge 30,381 crowd cheered the 10 to 1 winner, who became the fifth home-trained winner in a row of Ireland's premier classic and just the second Irish Derby winner trained by the legendary Dermot Weld.

Zagreb's 1996 success put a seal on a career that has seen Weld win top-flight races throughout the world but even Vintage Crop, Go And Go and Media Puzzle could not compare with Grey Swallow yesterday.

"This is the best result I've had," said Weld simply. "I've always believed in this horse and I think the best is still yet to come."

Despite the emotion of Grey Swallow having been bred by his 88-year-old mother, Marguerite, who retains a share in the colt along with the legendary British gambler Terry Ramsden and New York-based Rochelle Quinn, Weld immediately looked to the future and nominated the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe as Grey Swallow's ultimate target.

But in the midst of the hoopla, and with a winner's cheque of €736,000 floating about, Weld and Smullen will also no doubt have thought back almost exactly a year to the much less frantic atmosphere of the first evening of the 2003 Derby festival.

Already touted as a serious talent, Grey Swallow's racecourse debut was ruined in the starting gate when the horse next to him got badly upset.

Slightly claustrophobic anyway, Grey Swallow's frantic attempts to get out resulted in him balanced precariously between stalls and it wasn't just his debut that threatened to be ruined.

Normally the most urbane of men, Weld's sulphuric reaction spoke volumes for the fledgling talent he had on his hands. For some time the cuts and grazes on the grey colt's legs threatened his career before it had even started. But a 10-length success on his real first start at Galway a month later signalled the emergence of a real talent.

"I did briefly think about that day but that's life. You have to get on with things and now we can think of the Arc," said Weld whose confidence in Grey Swallow was not shaken by a fourth in the English Guineas and a third in the Irish equivalent.

"The doubt was about him staying but now he has proved he is a stayer with speed," he said.

"I will give him a break now and maybe think of the Irish Champion Stakes before the Arc."

It was a first Derby triumph for 27-year-old Smullen who always had the market principals, who included the first four from Epsom, in his sights.

In the straight, North Light kicked for home but Smullen always had him covered and when the test of Grey Swallow's stamina arrived in the final furlong he proved well up to the job.

"He's a true champion. He showed that as a two-year-old," said the former champion jockey. "It's been an up and down year but this is unbelievable. And it opens up everything for the rest of the season."

Kieren Fallon reported that the ground, officially good to firm (enough to have seen the withdrawal of Day Flight less than two hours before the race) was slightly too quick for North Light.

Tycoon's rider Colm O'Donoghue finished third for the second year running on a 150 to 1 shot and said:

"He's a real Group One horse at a mile-and-a-half. He travelled so easily in the race."

Nothing travelled like Grey Swallow, however, and in full flight he showed what we might so easily have missed. That would have been some shame.