RACING:AIDAN O'BRIEN has a trans-Atlantic Group One triangle arranged for today, reaching from New York to Paris and Newmarket and his son Joseph has a battle with the clock to join up the European dates.
The champion trainer’s 19-year-old son is due to ride Imperial Monarch in this evening’s Bastille Day highlight, the €600,000 Juddmonte Grand Prix de Paris, at Longchamp which is due to start at 6.50pm Irish time.
O’Brien Jnr will make his way to Paris having earlier teamed up with Reply in the Darley July Cup at 3.15pm, a booking that sees the teenage riding sensation face another battle, this time to make 8st 13lb on the three-year-old.
Third to Power in the Irish 2,000 Guineas before failing behind his stable companion Ishvanna in Royal Ascot’s Jersey Stakes, Reply is joined in the prestigious Group One sprint by both David Wachman’s filly Fire Lily and David Marnane’s almost €38,000 supplementary entry Dandy Boy.
Soft ground conditions at Newmarket could see the long-time ante-post favourite Bated Breath taken out this morning but Marnane isn’t overly happy at the going situation either.
“The ground is an issue and the track is a little issue. He’s done most of his winning on level tracks like Ascot and Meydan. I just hope he’s okay – a big horse like him on those undulations,” Marnane said yesterday.
“I wouldn’t be mad about softer ground. But he has won on yielding to soft at Fairyhouse. There’s hope he can handle the ground and it might not help some of the others,” he added.
Imperial Monarch faces eight opponents in Paris as he attempts to follow in the 2005 hoof-prints of the O’Brien-trained Scorpion in the mile and a half Longchamp highlight.
Unlucky-in-running in the French Derby, Imperial Monarch is rated an ante-post favourite by some firms but will have to face three horses from the stable of Andre Fabre who has won the race 11 times. Also in opposition will be the Epsom Derby runner-up Main Sequence as well as the Aga Khan’s supplementary hope, Lidari.
Later tonight the international Group One focus will switch to Belmont Park where last year’s Irish Derby hero Treasure Beach will attempt to emulate Cape Blanco by winning the $600,000 Man O’War Stakes under Jamie Spencer.
Also winner of the 2011 Secretariat Stakes at Arlington, Treasure Beach is the only Group/Grade One winner among a field of eight and is favourite to win the 11-furlong event.
Treasure Beach followed an honourable fourth in the Sheema Classic at Meydan with a ninth in Hong Kong’s QEII Cup in April, a below-par performance the Ballydoyle team are prepared to forget about.
“We got delayed on the way to Hong Kong and that might have upset his routine a bit,” spokesman TJ Comerford told American reporters yesterday. “He didn’t have a great run in Hong Kong, but still at the same time the horse that finished just beside him [Chinchon] came out and won [a Group 1] at Singapore the next time. “He was drawn very wide in Hong Kong, so it was very hard to have everything right for him on the day.”
The Belmont race is due off at approximately 9.34pm Irish time.
Other Irish interest overseas today sees Dandy Boy’s stable companion Jamesie take his chance in the prestigious handicap, the Bunbury Cup at Newmarket while jockey Colm O’Donoghue travels to Newbury to team up with David Nagle’s mudlark Maarek in the Group Three Hackwood Stakes at Newbury.
Today’s scheduled Tipperary fixture, called off yesterday due to waterlogging, has been rescheduled for Tuesday week, July 24th. The feature will be the Listed Danehill Dancer Stakes.
