Breeders’ Cup champion Ethical Diamond is back in the US this weekend where he will be a first runner at the Kentucky Downs track for Willie Mullins.
Jump racing’s dominant trainer has engaged Ryan Moore to ride Ethical Diamond in the Group Two Kentucky Turf Cup over a mile and a half. The race is worth $2 million, although non-Kentucky breds, such as last year’s shock Breeders’ Cup Turf winner, will compete for half that.
The only all-turf course in the US is located near the Tennessee border, and it won’t be entirely unfamiliar territory for Mullins.
He accompanied his father Paddy to the site in 1990 when it was first opened and was known as the Dueling Grounds. Grabel won an International Hurdle on that occasion when ridden by Tony Mullins.
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That was the richest jumps race in America at the time and Mullins is again in pursuit of big bucks with his former hurdler in a race likely to contain 10 runners in all. Likely opposition includes the German Group One winner Tiffany, trained by Mark Prescott.
“They have described the track to me as being like Bath,” the Newmarket trainer commented.
Dylan Browne McMonagle memorably guided Ethical Diamond to victory at Del Mar last November. He is on the sidelines after a fall at Bellewstown last week, although Moore was in the saddle when Ethical Diamond narrowly landed last month’s Ballyroan Stakes at Leopardstown.
The English jockey is making his own first appearance at Kentucky Downs and will also team up with his Coolmore bosses in the Grade Two Nashville Derby, where Causeway flies the flag for Ballydoyle.
He is one of a dozen hopefuls still in the mix for a race run over just shy of 10 furlongs and won last year by the Frankie Dettori-ridden Wimbledon Hawkeye.
With a massive $3 million prize fund it is the second richest race for three-year-olds in the US, behind only the Kentucky Derby.
Causeway is on a retrieval mission having finished last on his previous start in July’s Grand Prix de Paris at Longchamp. Prior to that he’d won his four previous races, including Royal Ascot’s King Edward VII Stakes.
Causeway will be joined in Saturday’s lucrative contest by another Irish hope, Nil Bua Gan Dua. Joseph O’Brien’s hope – whose name roughly translates from Irish as no victory without hardship – will be ridden by US-based Irish rider Ben Curtis.
O’Brien has already tasted success at Kentucky Downs, winning a $500,000 race there in 2022 with Reckoning Force. Nil Bua Gan Dua won a Listed race at Gowran in July on his previous start.
In 2010 O’Brien and Curtis, along with Gary Carroll, were part of a three-way tie for the apprentice jockeys’ title in Ireland.
Saturday’s Kentucky Downs meeting is the latest at the course located about an hour north of Nashville and which offers a massive $37 million in prize money over a number of weeks. Casino revenue has financially propelled it into the top echelon of racetracks in terms of purse money.
The start of September accelerates focus on international racing generally and attention in Australia is already on Joseph O’Brien’s potential grip on November’s Aus$10 million Melbourne Cup.
O’Brien has twice won the race that famously stops a nation through Rekindling (2017) and Twilight Payment three years later. On Tuesday, a total of 101 initial entries were announced for the world-famous handicap, and O’Brien has 11 of them.
They include one of the 12-1 joint-favourites, Defiantly, last year’s runner-up Goodie Two Shoes and James J Braddock, who ran third in June’s Epsom Derby. The Derby winner, Christmas Day, is one of five entries made by Aidan O’Brien, who has yet to win the Melbourne Cup.
It’s an astonishing show of strength from O’Brien jnr in a race where six runners form a single trainer is the most in the history of the race.
James J Braddock’s owner, Ozzie Kheir, told media in Australia recently: “I spoke to him [O’Brien] last night and was joking to him that he’ll probably have half the field!”
The other Irish trainer still in the Melbourne Cup mix is Emmet Mullins, who has left in Winday. Among the long-range English entries is the former Champion Hurdle winner Constitution Hill. He is set to have the third start of his emerging flat career at Kempton on Saturday in the September Stakes, where he will need to finish in the first three to meet conditions of the Flemington contest.
The 2023 Champion Hurdle winner has been made a 20-1 in some lists to pull off an unlikely global double.
