Aidan O’Brien ran out of chances to produce a convincing Derby contender when his last two bullets narrowly missed their targets here on Sunday.
Rumours of plans to supplement Found into the colts’ Classic at Epsom a week on Saturday always seemed a touch fanciful and that prospect receded when she was beaten in the Irish 1,000 Guineas but Giovanni Canaletto must remain a Derby possible despite his defeat in the Gallinule Stakes.
The deflating aspect of that latter outcome is that the colt, a brother to one of O’Brien’s past Derby winners in Ruler Of The World, managed to get beaten by a filly, Curvy, whose recent runs had been in handicaps. But there were excuses, starting with the fact that this was Giovanni Canaletto’s first run of the year, only three weeks after a dirty scope forced him to miss an intended outing at Chester.
He was held up off a steady early pace while Curvy raced handily and got first run on him. Giovanni Canaletto finished powerfully and was beaten only a neck at the line. This experience, plus the stronger pace and extra quarter-mile of the Derby, could see him do much better if he was allowed to line up on the big day.
But O’Brien’s initial reaction suggested that may not happen. “He looked babyish enough there, didn’t he? He was that way last year. He was probably more professional even than he was last year but he’s still babyish.
“I’d say it’d be hard to throw him into Epsom, wouldn’t it? You see him coming down that hill? Listen, I don’t know, lads. We’ll see how he is. He’s still a baby, I’d say and obviously Ryan [Moore] got those vibes from him because he was looking after him the best he could.”
The chestnut is now 16-1 from 10-1 for the Derby, putting him between O’Brien’s other two obvious potential runners, Hans Holbein (12-1) and Kilimanjaro (20-1). Gleneagles is available at 10-1 with one firm but no one in the Ballydoyle camp appears to favour a tilt at Epsom with a horse who seems a definite miler.
A handful of firms offer Found at 14-1 for the Derby and in fairness to her she stayed on gamely at the end of this Guineas to be beaten only half a length by Pleascach, who got a clearer run through and hung into the runner-up in the closing stages. But this hardly had the look of a Derby trial. O’Brien reserved judgment on what Found might do next and is likely to formulate his Epsom plans later this week.
Pleascach is the latest feather in the cap of her trainer, Jim Bolger, who also owns her and indeed bred her. Considering she had won over 10 furlongs on soft ground in her previous race, it is some achievement to win a Guineas with her on a much drier surface and she will now step back up in distance, probably to contest the Irish Derby on 27 June.
Asked if he had made that entry speculatively or in all seriousness, Bolger replied: “Oh, I am serious. When it comes to €12,500, I have to be serious. Sorry to be talking about money on a Sunday.
“It wasn’t so much what I thought about her, it was really what I thought about the colts, with all due respect to our neighbours [in England]. I think she’s right on that level, with the colts. She’s all heart.” But the trainer does not believe she would be well suited by Epsom.
Earlier on this card, in the Tattersalls Gold Cup, Al Kazeem bagged a Group One prize for the first time since the summer of 2013. Roger Charlton’s horse has done well to return to peak form after the experience of being retired to stud, only to be returned to the track last year after showing low fertility.
Charlton, who indicated that Royal Ascot’s Prince of Wales’s Stakes was likely to be Al Kazeem’s next race, praised the horse’s professional attitude. “He’s never looked at another filly, he’s never shouted, he’s never done anything other than prick his ears and get on with his work. He works well, moves beautifully.
“Older horses, they’re normally a bit arthritic, a bit stiff and they come out and they’re a bit pottery and less inclined to want to get out of bed. He’s never been like that and it’s a credit to the horse’s constitution.
“You talk about great horses having a tough constitution and he has to go down … there are better horses than him, obviously, because he’s rated 121-122 and a really good horse should be three or four lengths better than that but you talk about Giant’s Causeway and horses like that, there’s no reason why you can’t talk about this horse in the same way.
“He toughs it out, he doesn’t run bad races. For a long time, he was either first or second early on in his life. He’s run in two Arcs, two Tatts Gold Cups, he’s amazing.
“I think it’s good for racing, too. The jumpers are lucky that they’re around for many years and people get attached to them. We get a lot of fan club and people that enjoy seeing him. He’s good-looking and hopefully brings people to racecourses.”
When last seen, Al Kazeem was pipped by Cirrus Des Aigles. That rival finished a most disappointing last of four in Sunday’s Prix D’Ispahan at Longchamp, apparently the result of a rear shoe breaking in half in mid-race. The winner was the very classy Solow, trained by Freddy Head, who plans to send him over for the Queen Anne at Royal Ascot.
