Does Aidan O’Brien have a hidden trump card?
After six weeks of trial races for the various Classics, untapped potential is the rarest of commodities in most yards.
Trainers have spent their time sifting for those nuggets of equine gold, although many are left with little more than a handful of silt and a lowering of their sights. But Aidan O’Brien is different.
Sir Michael Stoute has had twice as many runners in handicaps as he has had in Group races, but O’Brien works to the inverse proportion. Well, when your raw material is sourced from the produce of the Coolmore Stud, then the sights need to be raised rather higher.
O’Brien already has the first and second favourites in the market for the Investec Derby but the sifting process continues with nine colts still entered for the Abu Dhabi Irish 2000 Guineas at the Curragh on Saturday, of which - with the exception of Air Chief Marshal - all of them holding an entry for the Derby on June 5th.
As is his preference – and prerogative – O’Brien is still talking in terms of “possible” runners at this stage but the two colts who are generating the greatest interest – and speculation – are Jan Vermeer and Steinbeck (pictured). Neither has run this season and the form of the O’Brien runners first time out in recent weeks is hard to weigh up.
O’Brien was the first to admit that he may have been caught out over the fitness of St Nicholas Abbey, after he finished only sixth in the 2000 Guineas, and Cabaret was nowhere to be seen at the business end of the Musidora Stakes at York last week while Cape Blanco left his calling card for the Derby after taking care of business by three-and-and-a-quarter lengths in the Dante Stakes the following day.
Jan Vermeer ended what had been a fruitful autumn for O’Brien’s two-year-olds when he won the Group One Criterium International at Saint-Cloud in November. A measure of that performance was that he beat stable companion Midas Touch – who won the Derby Trial at Leopardstown nine days ago – by five-and-three-quarter lengths.
However, while the memory of his emphatic performance – even if the distances may have been exaggerated by the very soft condition at Saint-Cloud that day – lingers in the mind it is easy to forget that Steinbeck was the front-runner in O’Brien’s juvenile class of 2009. Last April, three weeks before his first run, O’Brien had said of the colt: “We have a very nice Footstepsinthesand colt, out of Castara Beach, called Steinbeck, and the birds in the trees around here are singing about him.”
He seemed like me might be able to give the birds a run for their money when he won his maiden at Naas last May beating Gold Bubbles (a head second to Aviate in last week’s Musidora Stakes at York last week) by two-and-a-half lengths. “He is one to look forward to and we’ll see how he is when we get him home but he`s in all those races and is a real natural horse,” O’Brien said.
Unfortunately those races, like the Coventry and National Stakes, came and went but Steinbeck was still on the sidelines and did not race again until the Dewhurst Stakes last October. The form of the Dewhurst was somewhat discredited at the time, with the first four home covered by around a half-length, but, coming back from a five-month layoff, Steinbeck looked the one to take from the race. He hit the gates running, leaving Johnny Murtagh with the dilemma of trying to rein him back or let him bowl along.
Murtagh took the latter option and Steinbeck led until his lack of race-fitness told in the last hundred yards. His performance told observers all they needed to know, however, that was the last they saw of Steinbeck. Another setback ruled him out of the 2000 Guineas but the Irish Guineas could be the moment when O’Brien pulls another ace from the pack.
The naming of Coolmore horses is usually left to Sue Mangier and she has often drawn her inspiration from the literary world. John Steinbeck was a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, short-story writer and war correspondent and O’Brien may view the choice of name differently depending on which of the writer’s works springs most readily to mind.
His first novel, Cup of Gold, would certainly be more welcome for O’Brien that the work for which the writer is best remembered, The Grapes of Wrath.
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