Brian Meehan believes Titus Mills can keep him select group
There may have been times when Brian Meehan thought that time was running out for him this season.
The Manton-based trainer has won at least one Group One race in five of the last six years but a slow start and some near-misses mean that he may have only one roll of the dice left. But he thinks it could be a good one.
This year’s Racing Post Trophy is dominated by Irish-trained horses but it is the Irishman who moved to England who has one of the best of the home team’s runners at Doncaster. The son of a Limerick orthopaedic surgeon, Meehan had to deal with a somewhat fractured start to the season with just 10 winners by the start of June. “It was a tough spring but the horses weren’t quite right,” he admitted. “But they rallied and they’re really going well.”
A good showing by the yard’s two-year-olds has helped and Meehan has plenty of confidence behind Titus Mills, who goes into the race unbeaten in both starts at Ascot and a Listed race at Goodwood last month. Both times he was ridden by Martin Dwyer, who is currently still out injured, and Kieren Fallon takes the ride this time.
“It didn’t go quite right for him at Goodwood – he was out in front a little bit too long,” Meehan said. “Martin felt that he needed to do that because we weren’t sure about the pace in the race. It was the right thing to do at the time but maybe not the ideal way to ride him in the future was what Martin said.
“We’re very pleased with him since, his work is excellent, and the timing couldn’t be better. We thought about the Somerville at one stage, but we weren’t happy with his scope that week, so we didn’t go that route and then we skipped on to here.
“Kieren’s come in for quite a few of Martin’s rides, while Martin’s off, rode him last week and loved the horse.”
Meehan's own liking for the horse goes as far as to put him alongside Crowded House, with whom Meehan won the same race two years ago. “We’ve got a good record in the race and I think he’s as good as anything we’ve run in it,” Meehan said.
Other juveniles who have helped lift the yard’s season from its spring torpor have been Theyskens' Theory, the winner of the Group Three Prestige Stakes at Goodwood in August, and Waiter’s Dream.
The Oasis Dream colt won the Group Three Acomb Stakes at York’s Ebor meeting and then finished third and fourth in the Champagne and Dewhurst Stakes. “He probably hasn’t shown in his last two starts quite the flair he showed at York,” Meehan said. “Certainly Kieren thinks that and he’s ridden him most of the time. So he thinks there’s a lot of improvement in him for next year so we’ll probably leave it at that.”
This time last year Lady of the Desert was one of Meehan’s Classic contenders, but it never quite worked out. An early defeat in the Group Three Fred Darling Stakes at Newbury was followed by worse when he took the filly to France. She finished less than two lengths fifth in the Group One Poule d'Essai des Pouliches, a race in which she had just about every bit of bad luck going.
A mid-term rest and a return to sprint distances saw Lady of the Desert finished second in two end-of-season Group Ones, the Sprint Cup at Haydock and the Prix de l’Abbaye at Longchamp, which came either side of a victory in the Group Two Diadem Stakes at Ascot in September.
“We had to try the mile with her in the spring,” Meehan reasoned “which I think she got. She was very unlucky in the French Guineas – got a lot of interference there. She had a summer break and she bounced back really well to sprinting and was very impressive in the Diadem. She’ll have a break now and come back and be champion sprinter next year.”
Clearly Meehan believes that her time will come.
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