Five things we learnt from the Ballydoyle press morning

The Irish Champions Festival is important at Ballydoyle.  The weekend is on the radar from early in the season, and it comes into sharp focus from a long way out.  Aidan O’Brien had four winners at each of the last two renewals of the Irish Champions’ Festival and, in 2023, he had five.

The team for the 2026 renewal is coming together nicely.  Constitution River in the Royal Bahrain Irish Champion Stakes is the headline act of course, the Prix du Jockey Club winner, the Eclipse winner, and “everything that could have gone wrong in the Juddmonte International went wrong.”

Old sparring partners Precise and True Love in the Matron Stakes, over a mile.  Precise can go further, True Love just about gets a mile.  It’s a similar story with Alpha and Sun Goddess in the Moyglare Stud Stakes. “Alpha is a big, powerful filly who will get the trip well and who will go hard.”

Sun Goddess has never been beyond six furlongs, but you saw the turn of foot that she showed at York over that trip, and how strongly she finished off her race.

She won the Group Two Airlie Stud Stakes over six furlongs, and she beat the colts in the Group One Phoenix Stakes over the same trip.  The Cheveley Park is on her radar, that’s how fast she is, but she could take in the Moyglare en route.

It would be an unusual double, win the Moyglare over seven furlongs, then drop back down to six furlongs to win the Cheveley Park 13 days later.  Aidan O’Brien completed the double with Lake Victoria two years ago but, before Lake Victoria?  Sayyedati in 1992, 32 years earlier.

Scandinavia will surely take some stopping in the Irish St Leger.  The Justify colt has now won his last seven.  He’s getting into Kyprios territory.

It was a big performance by the then three-year-old to win the Goodwood Cup last year.  It’s unusual for a three-year-old to win the Goodwood Cup, it’s unusual for a three-year-old to run in the Goodwood Cup.  Scandinavia was the only three-year-old to run in the race last year.  Indeed, he was the first three-year-old to run in the race since the Aidan O’Brien-trained Santiago, the Irish Derby winner of that year, Covid year, finished third behind Stradivarius in the race in 2020.

Stradivarius won the Goodwood Cup too as a three-year-old, in 2017, the first three-year-old to win it since Lucky Moon in 1990.  Scandinavia was the second.

Scandinavia hasn’t been beaten since then.  In the meantime, he has won a St Leger and a Vintage Crop Stakes and a Saval Beg Stakes and a Gold Cup and another Goodwood Cup.  Until he got to Goodwood last time, he hadn’t won any of those races by more than a length and a half, and only one of them by more than three parts of a length.

He is a horse who appears to do only as much as he needs to do.  He won this year’s Goodwood Cup by eight and a half lengths, but that was only because he was chasing the riderless Amiloc.  Of course, he has a long way to go before he will be able to match Kyprios’ achievements, but he is on that track.

The rest of the Ballydoyle team for the Irish Champions’ Festival is coming together too.  Ibelieveicanfly could be a big player in the Ingabelle Stakes, dropping down in grade after finishing a close-up fourth in the Group Two Debutante Stakes last time.  Isaac Newton could be interesting in the Solonaway Stakes, he was good in winning the Desmond Stakes over the same course and distance in early August.

It looks like there will be a strong team for the new Group One race, the Golden Fleece Stakes, the old Champions Juvenile Stakes, lengthened from eight furlongs to nine, stepped up in grade from Group Two to Group One.  Aix La Chapelle and Sergei Diaghilev,plus Shakespeare and Victory Speech are all possibles, and Darkness Falls threw his hat into the ring when he won the maiden at The Curragh on Saturday by seven lengths.

Piazza San Marco started off his season with a good run to finish third behind Highwayman in the Listed Vinnie Roe Stakes over a mile and six furlongs at Leopardstown two weeks ago, and he could drop down in trip for the Kilternan Stakes.  Giant Sequoia, Florida Bay and Haffner are all in the mix for the National Stakes, and Ryan Moore will have a tough decision to make.

Mission Central for the Flying Five, the King Charles III winner, and he will be better-suited by The Curragh than he was by York in the Nunthorpe last time.  And Simply Astounding holds an entry in the Blandford Stakes.  We haven’t seen her yet this season but, by Wootton Bassett out of Minding, she will be an interesting contender if she makes the line-up.

Away from Leopardstown and The Curragh, these are big weekends coming up.  It looks like Irish Derby winner Benvenuto Cellini is going to go for the Prix Niel at Longchamp this Sunday, Arc trials weekend now a week earlier than it used to be, which means that it doesn't clash with the Irish Champions Festival.  He could go onto the Arc then.  

Irish Guineas winner Gstaad is on track too for the Prix du Moulin, also on Sunday.

Diamond Necklace won’t go for the Vermeille on the same day.  The quadruple Group One winner lost her unbeaten record in the Prix Jean et Louis Romanet last time, but the ground was soft and she was beaten by a high-class older mare in Aventure, runner-up to Bluestocking in the 2024 Arc, and her trainer isn’t too perturbed.

The decision was to go there instead of to the Vermeille, give her more of a break before Arc weekend, when she will contest either the Arc or the Opera.  “She’ll have a good long run in to the weekend, and we think that she’ll be tighter and fitter than she was at Deauville.”

Minnie Hauk is on track for the Arc too.  Last year’s runner-up, she could be one of the forgotten horses in it.

Derby winner Christmas Day and Criterium de Saint-Cloud winner Pierre Bonard head up the Ballydoyle team for the St Leger, third and second respectively in the Great Voltigeur at York behind Arc aspirant Maltese Cross, and they could be joined in the race by Amelia Earhart.  The Cheshire Oaks winner, sent off as favourite for the Epsom Oaks, also has the option of the Park Hill Stakes on the same weekend, but the St Leger is a real possible alternative.  “It’s possible. It would be interesting."

Ballydoyle is an unusual place.  Even if it’s not your first time here, you’re still blown away by it.  To go through the gates at Ballydoyle is to leave the rest of the world behind.

The horses, the people, the serenity.  And the conductor, the fulcrum on which the entire operation balances and depends.  Sure, it’s a massive team effort, it wouldn’t happen without the team, but Aidan O’Brien is the person who picked the team, who put the team together and who is at the heart of its operation.  He is at the core of it all, the director, the instigator of the culture that allows it all to happen.

There’s the history of it too, with roots that go back decades to the beginnings of Aidan O’Brien here, that go back to Vincent O’Brien in the early 1950s if you want.  A small corner of County Tipperary which has global reach, which regularly and repeatedly sends reverberations around the world of thoroughbred racing.