His greatest rivals had a fine opening day, but this still seems likely to be Aidan O’Brien’s week after Highland Reel, a horse that epitomises his trainer’s relentless will to win, took the Prince of Wales’s Stakes here on Wednesday in his familiar, battling fashion. The Godolphin operation, successful in two Group 1s on Tuesday, watched the favourite Jack Hobbs trail home in last place, and O’Brien will now saddle the hot favourite in the next three Group One events here including Thursday’s Gold Cup.
Highland Reel’s one-and-a-quarter length defeat of Decorated Knight was his sixth success at the highest level and came only 19 days after his win in the Coronation Cup at Epsom. He has now earned £5.9m in prize money, more than any horse that O’Brien has trained, and while Highand Reel may not be the best racehorse ever to peer out of a stall at Ballydoyle, he is surely the most dependable. He has registered Group One wins in Chicago, Los Angeles and Hong Kong as well as at Ascot and Epsom, finished second in last year’s Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe and never seems to run a bad race when the ground is good or faster.
On one count, which includes O’Brien’s Grade One winners over jumps before moving to Ballydoyle, this was his 300th success at the highest level, and he could start on his fourth century as soon as Thursday afternoon, when Order Of St George will start favourite for the Gold Cup. As ever, O’Brien portrayed himself as a small cog in a very large and complex machine, but like Tony McCoy over jumps, he is setting records that no one is likely to approach for decades to come.
“He’s concrete, amazing,” O’Brien said. “We were hoping that courage would come into it. He’s tactically very quick and unbelievably courageous, and Ryan [Moore] gave him a brilliant ride. He’s passed every test that you would want a thoroughbred to go through from the time he was two. We have toured the world with him and every day that he’s turned up in big races, he always full of courage.
“Ryan asked for it and he gave it to him. It’s what his dad [Galileo] had that made him different from every other horse that we’ve every had anything to do with, and this horse has it tenfold. That’s what makes Galileos different.”
Highland Reel’s courage was not enough to win him a Classic as a three-year-old, though he did finish second to New Bay in the 2015 French Derby at Chantilly. Had he finished first, of course, he might well have joined the Coolmore Stud’s band of stallions at the end of the season, but having got off the mark for the year in the Gordon Stakes at Goodwood, a race often seen as a St Leger trial, he travelled to Arlington Park in Chicago to win the Grade 1 Secretariat Stakes just 17 days later.
His next five starts, over the course of eight months, were at Leopardstown, Moonee Valley in Australia, Sha Tin in Hong Kong (where he took the Grade One Hong Kong Vase), Meydan in Dubai and then back at Sha Tin. Three months after that, he won British racing’s midsummer showpiece, the King George & Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot. He is that, very unusual, kind of horse.
“Joseph [O’Brien, the trainer’s son] rode him in the French Derby and said to me that he was a very special horse,” O’Brien said. “We’ve called on him so many days. Sometimes he gets beaten, but if the pace is strong and it comes down to courage, then he will be there fighting. I’m not sure we’ve ever had a horse with the constitution that he has.”
Highland Reel is likely to return to Ascot to attempt to win a second King George but he also has a Breeders’ Cup Turf title to defend and seems sure to get his favoured fast ground at Del Mar in California in early November. He could also, as O’Brien said, “race on into December, he’ll get on the plane and you don’t have to stop.”
It took just 24 hours for the Ballydoyle machine to register a Group One win after the disappointment of Churchill’s defeat at odds-on in the St James’s Palace Stakes on Tuesday, and O’Brien offered the unusually hot weather at the track as a possible reason for the dual 2,000 Guineas winner’s poor run.
“I’m not sure what happened,” O’Brien said. “He didn’t eat up his food last night, which is unusual for him, but it was very warm in Ireland and very warm here. Some horses, maybe, on the day it can affect them. That’s all I can put it down to.
“He never kicked in yesterday. He was sweating but every horse and every person is sweating in this weather. Maybe he just had an off day.
“They are only flesh and blood like us and everyone is entitled to a bit of a down day. It’s going to make it interesting when we get going again. If everything was well, you’d love to think about [the Sussex Stakes at] Goodwood, but we’ll see.”
Moore’s success on Highland Reel took him level with William Buick on two winners for the week so far, and with Order Of St George to come before O’Brien’s Caravaggio and Winter go to post as favourite for Group 1s on Friday, he is now all but unbackable to finish the meeting as the leading rider.
Qemah, last year’s Coronation Stakes winner, recorded her second win at the Royal meeting in the Group Two Duke Of Cambridge Stakes, the first success at this year’s meeting for a horse owned by a member of Qatar’s ruling al-Thani family. Godolphin’s runner Usherette finished only third after suffering a difficult passage against the rail, and Sheikh Mohammed’s operation may look at Friday’s Commonwealth Cup, when they have two fancied runners against Caravaggio, as the race that could be the difference between a very good Royal meeting and an outstanding one.
Heartache zips home to give Hot To Trot something to savour
This is a place where the biggest, shiniest trophies are nearly always handed to sheikhs or monarchs or billionaires but once in a blue moon success at Royal Ascot can seem almost affordable. So it was when the 75 members of the Hot To Trot syndicate hugged and laughed their way into the winner’s enclosure on Wednesday to greet their zippy little filly, Heartache, after the Queen Mary Stakes.
For £2,000 per head these cheery folk have a lease on seven horses for the year. A seat in the Parade Ring Restaurant here would cost a similar sum. Generally, their investment takes them to places such as Bath, where Heartache bolted up on her racecourse debut last month, but on Wednesday they made it to the little circle of turf where every owner in Flat racing wants to be.
Not only that but they did so at a time, after the eighth race of the week, when the mighty Coolmore organisation was still trying to gain entry. So was the big-spending Qatari operation, Al Shaqab. Those superpowers had their turns later in the afternoon but the likes of Hamdan Al Maktoum and Khalid Abdullah remain winless for the week here, owners who would not blink in paying, for a single horse, a sum exceeding Hot To Trot’s expenditure for the entire year.
Among Heartache’s happy crew were David and Anna Robinson, a couple from Poole making their first foray into ownership. David’s older brother has owned jumpers for years with the usual quantity of success, which is to say very little.
David, an airline pilot with Cathay Pacific, said: “We’re in it for the fun, the sociability, just the excitement of it all. It’s thrilling. Can you believe it, two wins out of two!”
One of his co-owners, passing by on the way to the champagne bar, interjected: “I’ve been in it six years and had a lot of no wins out of two. But we’re all in it for the fun and the people.”
“That was awesome, just really special to watch,” said Heartache’s trainer, Clive Cox. “And to share it with this wonderful Hot To Trot Racing as well, there’s all manner of people here that are so buoyed by the experience.”
Cox knew he had something special in his Lambourn yard when Heartache brushed up against the course record at Bath. But he had some misgivings in the paddock here, warily eyeing up his filly’s US-trained rival Happy Like A Fool, from the Wesley Ward yard that had won here on Tuesday.
“I was a bit worried when I saw the American filly, to be honest with you. She looked pretty awesome walking round the paddock. So when Adam [Kirby, the winning jockey] was taking her on as early as he did, I was a little bit concerned for a minute.”
However, Heartache’s effort lasted longer than Happy Like A Fool’s and she won by two and a half lengths. Cox is minded to aim her at York’s Nunthorpe in August, in which two-year-olds like her get a generous weight allowance.
Ward dusted himself off after that defeat and won the day’s closing contest, the Sandringham, with Con Te Partiro, a 20-1 shot. The filly was delivered with a late charge under Jamie Spencer, who has long seemed to enjoy such tactics. “I’ve got to give it to Jamie,” Ward said. “I don’t want to tell you all the horrible names I was calling him in the first part of the race but he sure did have the magic at the end.”
Ward is the only trainer to have won more than once so far this week and there is now a real prospect of him ending Royal Ascot as top trainer, which would be an astonishing achievement from the other side of the Atlantic.
Ward said his Princess Peggy was “fine” after being hit by a bicycle yesterday morning as she returned to the racecourse stables, having exercised on the track. The filly, due to run in the Albany Stakes on Friday, was knocked to the ground and sustained cuts and abrasions. She will have to pass a vet’s examination on Friday morning in order to take part. The cyclist was reportedly uninjured.
