The great Lester Piggott has been handed a chance to win the Derby for a 10th time, but as an owner rather than as a jockey, thanks to a talented youngster called Rivet who won the Racing Post Trophy here on Saturday. The two-year-old colt carries the colours of The Starship Partnership in which Piggott is one of the partners but he may have to stay away from Epsom next June, even if the horse turns up, the other owners having concluded that his presence is bad luck for Rivet.
“He can’t come again,” said Maureen Haggas, Piggott’s daughter, who is married to Rivet’s trainer, William. “The only time he’s been, he’s run crap. He’s banned.” Perhaps a similar view will be taken about the trainer himself, who went to saddle runners at Newbury instead of coming to Yorkshire.
Now 80, Piggott showed up at Newmarket this month to watch Rivet in the Dewhurst Stakes but the bubble appeared to burst before his eyes as the horse could manage no better than fifth of seven. That disappointing effort now looks an aberration in light of what Rivet did here, making all the running and staying on strongly to beat Yucatan, fancied to give the all-conquering Aidan O’Brien an eighth success in the Trophy.
This flatter track is reckoned to have made at least some of the difference for Rivet, who also won a Group Two here in September. Doncaster also appears to be the happiest of hunting grounds for his jockey, Andrea Atzeni, winning this race for an extraordinary fourth time in a row.
“Some horses don’t handle Newmarket and it just all went pear-shaped, I don’t know why,” Haggas said. “He was never really settled from the word go, in the paddock.” She added that Rivet had seemed much more comfortable here during the preliminaries. “Funnily, daddy said forever: Newmarket-trained horses don’t always run well at Newmarket.”
Haggas and her husband have toyed with the idea of taking some of their more nervous types to Newmarket’s racecourse stables early on a raceday in the hope that it might help keep them calm as the race approaches. Piggott’s typically pithy response: “They’re not that stupid, you know.”
Atzeni conceded that Rivet may not have handled Newmarket’s Dip all that well but also pointed to the change in tactics as having helped him recover his form. Having been held up and then arguably got outpaced in the Dewhurst, Rivet was able to wind up the pace from the front here and appeared to relish the extra furlong, staying on as well as anything to score by a length and three-quarters.
“He’s very genuine and he stays well,” Atzeni said. “He’s a lovely, big, scopey horse. Fair play to the team for running him as he was a little disappointing in the Dewhurst.”
Of all juvenile races, the Trophy has proved the best Derby trial, having been won by four subsequent Epsom heroes this century, but the Haggases will require persuasion if that is to be the target. William said before the Dewhurst that Rivet was a miler of the future, while Maureen suggested here that the step up to a mile and a half might be too big for this colt.
The bookmakers were thinking of Epsom, however. One firm slashed his Derby odds to 10-1 second-favourite, though 25-1 was available in at least one place.
O’Brien declined to offer excuses for Yucatan, saying: “He ran very well, very happy with him. The winner looks a very nice horse. I don’t think we ever viewed [Yucatan] as a Guineas horse, we always thought he was a middle-distance horse.”
The Irishman added that his Arc winner, Found, was in good form after her defeat by Almanzor at Ascot last Saturday. She will have an entry in next month’s Breeders’ Cup Turf, which she won last year, and will travel to California if her trainer remains happy with her nearer the time.
