Aidan O’Brien keeps faith with St Nicholas Abbey
Talk is cheap but talking horses can prove very expensive. These are the animals who promise everything on the gallops each morning but fail to deliver come the racecourse in the afternoon.
The talk on the gallops at Aidan O’Brien’s Ballydoyle yard in Co Tipperary, which has been the proving ground for some of the world’s best Thoroughbreds since the days when Vincent O’Brien set up there more than 50 years ago, tends to centre more on champions.
The latest incumbent, no relation to his predecessor, started there in 1996 and 14 years - and 160 Group One winners - later is setting about his annual task. Ballydoyle is backed up by the vast fiscal ammunition of the Coolmore Stud partners but just as money cannot buy happiness (it merely makes misery very much more bearable) it is not a guarantee of success.
A year ago O’Brien fielded half of the 12 runners that lined up for the Investec Derby and watched as they came home in second, third, fourth and fifth place. In fact every place possible bar the one that mattered – first. This year the trainer is busy assembling his latest squad for Epsom but early-season results have been more fourth-division than Premier League, although the victory for Midas Touch in the Derby Trial at Leopardstown on Sunday suggested a c***k of light at the end of the tunnel.
He is likely to be loaded onto the plane for Epsom next month but the star that O’Brien thinks will win him a first Derby since the glory years of Galileo (2001) and High Chaparral (2002) is St Nicholas Abbey.
If he were human, St Nicholas Abbey would have film-star looks but he failed his first audition as the star of the 2010 Flat season when he ran in the 2000 Guineas at Newmarket nine days ago. It was to be the first step in an ambitious challenge for the Triple Crown of Guineas, Derby and St Leger that had not been achieved since the days of Nijinsky, another stellar name from Ballydoyle, 40 years earlier.
However, the script took something of a hefty rewrite when St Nicholas Abbey finished only sixth to Makfi and now that path to glory has been replaced by the road to redemption. But O’Brien retains the faith in a colt who was the champion juvenile of Europe. “The race at Newmarket was St Nicholas Abbey’s first of the season and he was obviously very fresh,” he said. “He was ready to run a hard mile that day but maybe it wasn’t a hard mile and if the pace had been fast and strong his class would have come out.
“Before that, his times at home had been as good, if not better, than all the good milers we’ve had and he was doing it on the bridle. We didn’t ask him a lot at home and maybe we were too easy on him. He has to step up from the Guineas to the Derby but I think it’s in there. He was always the number one candidate for Epsom and nothing has changed. He’s one of those horses that comes along very few times but I don’t want to hype him, I’d rather he does the talking and shows you what he can do.”
The chance for others to show what they can do is closer to hand. Cape Blanco, undefeated in three starts last season, is due to make his seasonal debut in the Group Two totesport.com Dante Stakes at York on Thursday, possibly along with Viscount Nelson who finished 11th in the Guineas. “Cape Blanco gave himself a little nick at the back of his heel yesterday,” O’Brien explained. “He seems fine and the plan is to go to Epsom. There doesn’t look to be much pace in the Dante and you’d like to see something make it so it doesn’t become a walk and then a sprint. He’s a very low-moving horse and you wonder how far he’d stay but he has a lot of class. He should get a mile-and-a-quarter and then we’ll just have to see about further.”
The further you look around Ballydoyle, the more you see the possibilities for a summer of domination that was denied last year by the class of Sea The Stars.
Jan Vermeer is another Group One winner from last year whose racing programme is still being planned. He won the Criterium International at Saint-Cloud by four lengths last November and could yet make the Derby short-list if he runs in the Irish 2000 Guineas on May 22nd and the names of Mikhail Glinka, Viscount Nelson, Fencing Master - who finished seventh in the Guineas – and Midas Touch may also appear on the Epsom racecard.
However, the place to appear that counts at Ballydoyle is the honours board. O’Brien knows what it takes but also that he will not find out for certain until the starting stalls crash open. "The Derby is the ultimate test of the horse. Epsom is unique in that they have to be able to handle going left, going right, go uphill and downhill, cope with the camber, the preliminaries and then have the class to quicken up going up that hill. The ground is always perfect there so that’s never a problem.
“I can’t tell you what that feels like when you win but we’ve been on the other side of the fence many times. We try everything in our power to win it and we’ve been placed a lot of times."
Talking about a horse winning the Derby can be cheap but O’Brien knows that the horse who wins the Derby becomes a very expensive property indeed.
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