Particular Dubai Duty Free Irish Derby years get locked into popular memory through association. It’s mostly because of great winners like Nijinsky or Shergar. But not always.
For instance it’s 30 years since the Curragh ‘Bomb-Scare Derby’. So it seems 2017’s destiny to be recalled as the Derby where the public were superfluous to requirements.
Maybe that will ultimately prove to be a disservice to a superb winner on Saturday. The shock 40-1 Epsom hero Wings Of Eagles is a likely favourite this time to become the 19th colt to complete the coveted Derby-double. He has two worthy adversaries in the Epsom third Cracksman and the French Derby runner-up Waldgeist.
It’s the sort of tripartite international contest the Irish Derby has always aspired towards. Except it is overshadowed by the circumstances in which it is being run. The world of elite bloodstock competition is a bubble anyway but rarely can that bubble have been so air-tight as to produce so farcical a scenario as this for Ireland’s richest race.
The focus will inevitably be on the impact of a restricted 6,000 on-site crowd capacity on what is still bizarrely being billed as one of Irish racing’s major social dates of the year. Instead, an event supposed to be a showpiece for excellence threatens to be a showpiece for the self-absorption of a select few.
That the decision to repeat this Derby folly in 2018 has already been taken by Irish racing’s powerbrokers shows just how impervious to public consideration the sport is and is allowed to be.
Rather than move its most popular flat meeting of the year to Leopardstown while the Curragh’s €70 million reconstruction takes place, it is apparently a better option to tell the public to stay away. It’s hard to imagine any other sport – and especially not as financially dependent on State money as racing is – being so flippant about its customer base.
Despite the incongruity of classic splendour taking place on a building site in front of an audience only a quarter of what might be expected – and catered for in makeshift facilities – come 5.20 the Curragh focus will indeed be on the track where Ryan Moore will attempt to win a first Irish Derby.
Tougher task
The English jockey was denied at Epsom by Wings Of Eagles but rides the colt for just a second time as Aidan O’Brien pursues a 12th Derby success with five runners in all.
It’s 20 years since the trainer first won the Curragh Derby and in such a context a three-year gap since Australia’s 2014 win represents something of a lull.
Nevertheless odds of 10-1 about O’Brien pulling off an Irish Derby 1-2-3 for a sixth time are available. Four of his Epsom Derby winners have followed up at the Curragh but Wings Of Eagles looks to have a tougher task than Galileo & Co.
The son of Pour Moi has almost a length in hand of Cracksman from Epsom form but it’s not just the size of the winner’s SP that encourages a sense that that from might not stand up here.
Cracksman patently failed to act properly around Epsom and considering he looked like getting swallowed up early in the straight showed a good attitude to finish as close as he did.
Frankie Dettori misses out through injury, leaving Pat Smullen in with a chance to add to last year's victory on Harzand. But it's not just the Italian who reckons the Curragh will suit this long-striding son of Frankel a lot better.
The Irish Derby will be a new challenge to the French champion jockey Pierre-Charles Boudot but Waldgeist’s presence echoes that of Andre Fabre’s 2005 winner Hurricane Run who stepped up significantly over the Curragh’s mile and a half from his second in the Prix Du Jockey Club.
It's hardly unknown for the Ballydoyle 'support team' to rise to the Irish Derby occasion. But in form terms it looks a three-pronged proposition between horses from Ireland, England and France.
With Smullen in his corner, and the ground not expected to get too soft, Cracksman could prove the classic solution.
But for whichever horse comes out on top the most obvious element to this Derby will be the pathetic lack of public acclaim accorded it.
