Little has gone wrong for top rider Dylan Browne McMonagle this season, but Ireland’s champion jockey-elect has suffered a rare reverse by being replaced on the Melbourne Cup favourite Al Riffa.
The double-Melbourne Cup winner Mark Zahra will ride Joseph O’Brien’s star in the Aus$10 million (€5.6 million) race that famously stops a nation, on the first Tuesday of next month.
Browne McMonagle has ridden Al Riffa in 11 of his 15 career starts, including last month’s victory in the Irish St Leger, a third Group One victory for the partnership.
However, that Leger success was the first time Al Riffa carried the colours of Australian Bloodstock and the ownership has opted for local knowledge of Flemington over familiarity with the horse.
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Zahra (43) won the Melbourne Cup back-to-back with Without A Fight (2023) and Gold Trip in 2022. The latter was owned by Australian Bloodstock, who also scored in the world-famous race through the Ryan Moore-ridden Protectionist in 2014.
Docklands supplied Zahra with a Royal Ascot victory during the summer in the Queen Anne Stakes. Al Riffa is a general 5/1 favourite to deliver O’Brien a third Melbourne Cup following Rekindling (2017) and Twilight Payment (2020).
Australian Bloodstock’s Jamie Lovett told the Australian publication Betsy: “In my view and a few others, Zahra is probably the best two-mile rider, the best staying rider we’ve got.
“Obviously a lot of the connections have got a good relationship with him, so it just made sense.
“That said, I feel sorry for the kid [Browne McMonagle]. I mean, he’s ridden him very well. He’s always been on the horse in Ireland, so it wasn’t easy to make the decision, but I think history shows that the local guys tend to have a better strike rate.
“There’s not many Ryan Moores of the world that you can drop them anywhere and they ride up to a very high standard.”
Irish and other European jockeys have had a mixed reception when riding in Australia over the decades since Vintage Crop and Mick Kinane enjoyed a pioneering victory in 1993. Kinane came in for withering criticism in subsequent Melbourne Cup spins on Vintage Crop.
Frankie Dettori has never won the race in 17 attempts, finishing runner-up three times, including on the Willie Mullins-trained Max Dynamite 10 years ago. The Italian was frequently at the centre of media flak. In contrast, Moore’s reputation Down Under is massive, with him having won not only the Cup but also the Cox Plate and the Golden Slipper over the years.
“I think the biggest thing, in my view, is knowing the horses to follow and the jockeys to follow. If you don’t know the form and the local riders, it’s a long two miles around Flemington and if you get it wrong, it can cost you a Melbourne Cup,” Lovett commented. “It’s just important to have the guys that know the track inside out and it’s a very unique race, the Melbourne Cup.”
Irish representation in this year’s Melbourne Cup is also likely to include Willie Mullins’s Absurde, who is set to run in the race for a third time. Seventh and fifth in the last two years, he ran a rather unlucky seventh in last weekend’s Caulfield Cup.
“Massive run. A little bit disappointed. We just copped interference right as he was picking up. If we hadn’t have copped that, he would have been right there in the finish,” reported his rider Ben Allen.
In other news, Aidan O’Brien is mob-handed for Saturday’s Doncaster, with nine of the 13 entries left in on Monday coming from Ballydoyle. O’Brien is chasing a 12th win in the final Group One of the British season and Benvenuto Cellini is a heavy favourite to manage it.
Up against him may be Andrew Balding’s Item as well as Oxagon from the Gosden team, who was out of the frame on his last start in the Dewhurst. O’Brien’s Zetland Stakes winner Pierre Bonnard is also in the mix but may be among those kept in reserve for other top-flight options at Saint-Cloud on Sunday.
Before that, Tuesday’s Group Three highlight at the Curragh is the one-mile Staffordstown Stud Stakes for juvenile fillies, a contest that for the last two years identified future top-flight stars in Whirl and Content.
The Ballydoyle team has a trio of hopefuls this time with Wayne Lordan on board the apparent number one hope Sugar Island.
These will be the most testing conditions she has faced, however, and there could be some betting value in siding with her stable companion Ice Dancer. She coped with heavy going to win her maiden at Gowran when making virtually all the running.
Noel Meade’s Layfayette will relish the conditions and a patient spin from Finny Maguire may see the classy veteran emerge on top in the Amateur Derby contest. Go Just Do It drops in trip for the opener but his proven stamina over farther can only be an asset.
