HISTORY TELLS us that only truly exceptional 2,000 Guineas winners can make their speed last out the Derby trip at Epsom, but the tantalising fallout from Sea The Star’s blistering classic victory at Newmarket on Saturday is that he might just earn a place among that elite band.
Even before this year’s 2,000 Guineas, insiders knew the John Oxx-trained colt was a stand-out in terms of looks, and, as a half-brother to Galileo, the same applied to his pedigree. But plenty of well-bred lookers have proved unable to out-run drains down through the generations. What Sea The Stars has done is provide classic proof of what can happen if raw ability is tossed into the cocktail of all that peripheral stuff.
Yesterday, 24 hours after the colts’ classic, Ghanaati’s 20 to 1 defeat of Jim Bolger’s Cuis Ghaire in the 1,000 Guineas, with odds-on favourite Rainbow View out of the placings, only proved the danger of diving in off the deep-end on hotpots.
It is 20 years since Nashwan completed the Guineas-Derby double, and before him it took the elite trio of Royal Palace, Sir Ivor and Nijinsky to pull it off. But the immediate response from bookmakers to Sea The Stars’ defeat of Delegator and the Irish pair of Gan Amhras and Rip Van Winkle has been to make him only a 5 to 2 favourite for Epsom.
It is hard not to get carried away, however, when even a legendary jockey like Michael Kinane describes a horse as the “complete package”.
Of course, the man who has won practically every big race worthy of the name possibly thought the same a dozen years ago when Entrepreneur, the second of three previous Kinane-ridden Guineas winners, started odds on at Epsom to do the double and missed the frame.
But the difference now is that Kinane has been around Sea The Stars from the time he entered training.
His high opinion is built upon a bedrock of familiarity. No doubt after the veteran jockey’s input, Oxx yesterday confirmed the plan is to head to the Derby at the start of June.
“I don’t see any reason why we will change our minds,” the Curragh trainer said. “There is a question mark over the Derby distance, but there is question mark over every Guineas winner going to Epsom about whether or not they will stay.
“It has always been in our minds that he is not certain to stay. He is out of an Arc winner who has produced a Derby winner in Galileo, but he is by Cape Cross, who was a miler, by Green Desert, who was by Danzig, which is all speed.”
The counter-argument, of course, is the old one that anyone going to Epsom guaranteed to stay is probably too slow to win.
That won’t be the case with Sea The Stars, nor for Gan Amhras, who in a normal year would look to have run a perfect Derby trial with a staying-on third.
The same comment could apply to Rip Van Winkle too.
Cuis Ghaire heads for the Irish 1,000 Guineas next after finding only the Barry Hills-trained Ghanaati too good in yesterday’s classic.
The winning trainer’s son, Richard, rode Ghanaati, whose previous racecourse experience had all been on artificial surfaces.
Nevertheless, Hill jnr reported: “To be honest, my father was very confident on the run up to the race.”
Proof that sometimes confidence can be justified.
