FRENCH DERBY PREVIEW: AIDAN O'BRIEN will be represented by four horses as he attempts to break his duck in the French Derby at Chantilly tomorrow, with Johnny Murtagh electing to ride Westphalia.
The €1.5 million Prix du Jockey Club has proved an unrewarding classic for Ireland’s champion trainer, whose number one selection in each of the last two years has beaten only one home.
O’Brien has four chances to improve on that record, and with Murtagh on Westphalia and Séamus Heffernan on the pacemaker Set Sail, the Ballydoyle team have booked the top French rider Davy Bonilla for Malibu Bay, while Jimmy Fortune will be on board Drumbeat.
However, unlike his Epsom Derby dilemma, Murtagh’s French choice looks to have been relatively straight-forward.
Westphalia will be making his third start in France this year. Last season’s Champagne Stakes winner was runner-up to Silver Frost in a Group Three at Longchamp in April, then was promoted to third by the stewards behind the same horse after an interrupted passage in last month’s French 2,000 Guineas.
Silver Frost, who is favourite to complete his own Guineas-Derby double tomorrow, will be ridden by Oliver Peslier, as Christophe Soumillon has been claimed to ride the Aga Khan’s supplementary entry Beheshtan.
That colt drops back from a mile-and-a-half, while there are doubts about Silver Frost’s ability to jump from a mile to tomorrow’s mile-and-two-and-a-half furlongs.
Soumillon is chasing a fourth win in the French Derby, but so is Frankie Dettori, who teams up with Godolphin’s Parthenon.
Dettori’s mount beat an O’Brien runner, Stately Home, in his last start at Hamilton and carries some confidence from the Godolphin team.
“He is in very good order. He’s very progressive, but now he is going into the big league,” said Godolphin spokesman Simon Crisford yesterday.
