Forced into a major shuffle of his jockey cards, Aidan O’Brien appears to have found the ace he’s looking for in former French champion Christophe Soumillon.
Ryan Moore’s leg fracture, announced at the weekend, is likely to keep Coolmore’s No 1 rider out for the rest of the season. On top of that, their No 2, Wayne Lordan, is pinning his hopes on an appeal against a 10-day ban handed out for breaching cross-channel whip rules. That ban takes in next week’s Irish Champions Festival and the Doncaster St Leger.
At the start of autumn, and an intense big-race schedule both domestic and international, it makes for an organisational headache at European racing’s most powerful operation. O’Brien was once a champion amateur jockey, but even he can’t micromanage to the extent of riding Ballydoyle’s blue-blooded inmates himself.
Lordan’s capacity to step in when required was underlined in June when partnering Lambourn to Derby glory at Epsom. But there can hardly be a top jockey in the world who hasn’t scented international opportunity due to Moore’s misfortune.
READ MORE
Even Frankie Dettori has been in touch with the Master of Ballydoyle to offer his services, perhaps at the Breeders’ Cup in Del Mar or even the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in Paris next month. It is Soumillon, though, who looks central to the improvised reshuffle.
“It’s very possible; we’ve been using him all the time,” said O’Brien when the Belgian’s name was put to him at a Horse Racing Ireland (HRI) media morning in Ballydoyle on Monday. “He’s very experienced, a very uncomplicated fellow and he’s not tied down [with a retainer] in any way. Ryan is gone, it looks like Wayne will be gone and I can’t see why not.”
Some might raise an eye at Soumillon being termed uncomplicated. The 44-year-old has some form in the hot-headed stakes, not least being banned for two months after elbowing Rossa Ryan off his horse in a notorious incident at Saint-Cloud in 2022. He has had mixed big-race fortunes in Ireland, famously winning the 2016 Irish Champion Stakes on Almanzor but copping flak for other rides, such as on Azamour in the same race 20 years ago.
Crucially, however, he is peerless around the Paris tracks. He is a proven winner at the Breeders’ Cup and acclaimed for years in Japan and Hong Kong. As racing’s international roadshow gets under way with a vengeance, Soumillon is a natural fit to replace Moore. He also could get the chance to regularly commute to Ireland; O’Brien again using “why not” at such a prospect.
It’s an international roadshow that starts domestically, though. Saturday week’s Royal Bahrain Champion Stakes will be the €1.25 million highlight of the 11th Irish Champions Festival run at Leopardstown and the Curragh (September 13th-14th).
Having won it a dozen times already, O’Brien was unsurprisingly HRI’s choice to plug Irish flat racing’s showpiece event. The fact he trains Delacroix contributed too. The main home hope is currently tied 1-1 with his Godolphin rival Ombudsman this season, so a third superpower clash will have central billing.
If Delacroix looked to mug Ombudsman in Sandown’s Eclipse, there was a similar unsatisfactory feel to their next clash at York. A pacemaker getting loose on the lead didn’t do Delacroix any favours and Ombudsman ultimately enjoyed a perfect passage. Despite that, O’Brien’s view on pacemakers is still positive. Delacroix will have his own at Leopardstown.
“Hopefully [Ombudsman] will come,” he said. “Sheikh Mohammed is probably the greatest sportsman we’ve ever seen, so I know our men will be delighted. We’d love him to come and then it will be a proper race.
“We’ll try to run a pacemaker if John [Gosden] doesn’t run a pacemaker and we’ll make it very straightforward. The pacemaker will go on and Delacroix can follow him, and Ombudsman can follow Delacroix if he wants!
“We’ll let them turn into the straight and see what happens, it’s very simple really. For the race and for everybody, we want it to happen."
O’Brien was impassioned about the importance of the Champions Festival and its slot on the racing calendar, as well as the need for wider positivity to promote racing’s virtues generally. More specifically, though, another Group One victory for Delacroix would be job-done in terms of a rare stallion opportunity for Coolmore.
“He’s vital, the horse everyone wants,” the trainer said pointing to his priceless pedigree potential for the bulk of Coolmore mares. “He’s an outcross, big, powerful. We’ve been waiting on a Dubawi to come along and here he comes. He has everything. We can’t wait to get him off to stud.”
The same doesn’t apply to the top filly Minnie Hauk, who is having an Arc preparation and may well be kept in training next year. Even with the English, Irish and Yorkshire Oaks under her belt, her trainer still puts her in the “could be anything” category.
“We haven’t seen the best of Minnie Hauk at all and you’re not going to see the best of her until the tempo is very strong all the way,” O’Brien commented. “We weren’t sure what she was and I thought we’d know [by now] . . . but we still don’t know. She’s relentless.”
It’s an Arc prospect that perhaps will excite a certain continental rider more than anyone. Before that, Soumillon will be on home ground when likely to team up with Whirl (Prix Vermeille) and Henri Matisse (Prix Du Moulin) on Longchamp’s Arc Trials programme this Sunday. It all makes for an intriguing autumn and one excited Belgian jockey.
