Aidan O’Brien is responsible for six of the 17 horses still engaged in the Racing Post Trophy at Doncaster on Saturday, the 35th and final Group One race of the domestic turf season, but Capri, the Beresford Stakes winner, seems likely to be the centre of attention as the trainer attempts to end the campaign with a 37% strike-rate at the highest level in Britain.
Minding’s success in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes at Ascot on Saturday was O’Brien’s 12th Group One winner in England this season, and his 21st in all. He now needs four more to equal the American trainer Bobby Frankel’s record of 25 top-level wins in a calendar year, and a successful two days at the Breeders’ Cup meeting at Santa Anita next month, which has a total of 13 Grade One events, will be crucial if O’Brien is to reach or exceed Frankel’s mark.
A son of the brilliant racehorse who was named after Bobby Frankel is also among the possible runners at Doncaster on Saturday, as Frankuus, a Group Three winner at Chantilly this month, has been left in the reckoning by Mark Johnston, his trainer.
Frankuus would be Frankel’s first Group One winner as a stallion were he to win on Saturday, but he is a 16-1 outsider in the early betting, which is dominated by Capri at a best price of 11-8.
Unlike Churchill, O’Brien’s winner of the Dewhurst Stakes this month, Capri has plenty of stamina on both sides of his pedigree, as he is by Galileo out of a mare who won at 12 furlongs and was herself out of a dam who won a Group Two at the Derby trip.
O’Brien’s seven previous winners of the Racing Post Trophy include High Chaparral (2001) and Camelot (2011), both of whom took the Derby the following year, while he also saddled St Nicholas Abbey, one of the most successful performers of his training career, to win the British season’s final Group One in 2001.
The two most recent Group One races for juveniles in Britain both resulted in a one-two for O’Brien-trained horses and Capri’s stable companion Yucatan, who was three-quarters of a length behind him in the Beresford Stakes at The Curragh in September, is the second-favourite for Saturday’s race at 5-1. William Haggas’s Rivet, fifth of seven behind Churchill in the Dewhurst, is next in the betting at 7-1 while Salouen, the runner-up in the Prix Jean-Luc Lagardère at Chantilly on Arc day, is a 10-1 chance.
The beaten horses behind Minding on Saturday included Galileo Gold, the 2,000 Guineas winner who finished fifth of the 13 starters, and Hugo Palmer, the colt’s trainer, confirmed on Monday that he will get the chance to add to this year’s two Group One victories next season.
“It is very exciting for us,” Palmer said. “Champions like Galileo Gold are so rare and hard to find. When you find one, you want to hang on to them. Hopefully we can regain his early-season form next year. I don’t think we could have won whatever we did on Saturday. Frankie [Dettori] and I discussed it beforehand and we decided that we were going to follow Jet Setting, as she was sure to go up the near rail and, indeed, she did go up there.
“As it turned out, we probably should have followed Barchan into the race as he went a stronger gallop and it would have carried us further into the race.
“If we had done things differently we could have perhaps finished closer to Minding.”
Erupt, the winner of the Canadian International at Woodbine on Sunday, will have his next race in the Breeders’ Cup Turf on 5 November.
“It has taken a bit of time this season to get everything right,” Alan Cooper, racing manager to the Niarchos family, which owns Erupt, said on Monday. “We took a decision to bypass the Arc to make sure we had him fresh for an autumn campaign and that [on Sunday] was the first leg of it.
“The obvious one to go for is the Breeders’ Cup Turf, we will get him home and see how he is before shipping him out again, but that is pretty much the idea.”
Erupt is top-priced at 9-1 for the 12-furlong race in a market headed by Flintshire, at 2-1, and two O’Brien-trained contenders, Highland Reel and the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe winner, Found.
