RACING:Australian hopes have been invested in a horse that faces a huge test in the Prince of Wales's Stakes on
Wednesday, says BRIAN O'CONNOR

WHEN SO You Think canters to the start in front of Royal Ascot’s massed stands on Wednesday it’s probably just as well for the imposing Aidan O’Brien-trained superstar he won’t realise how even a capacity crowd at racing’s most fashionable meeting will constitute just a fraction of his audience.

It might mean getting up in the middle of the night in Australia but watching So You Think take on some of the best horses in Europe at the Pommie home of everything Aussie blokedom despises means there’s going to be a televisual power surge “Down Under” in the early hours of Thursday morning.

There’s a helluva lot invested in So You Think winning the Prince Of Wales’s Stakes, and not just the millions paid by John Magnier’s Coolmore syndicate to buy a controlling stake in a horse whose value has been estimated at up to €40 million.

For Magnier Co, the pay-off on such stratospheric figures will come if So You Think can become as dominant a performer in the Northern Hemisphere as he was in Australia.

The hugely-imposing lump of horseflesh that has won his two starts in Ireland to date since coming here last winter is already a potential breeding goldmine back on his home patch. If he can thrash the best Europeans on the racecourse, then his value in the breeding shed, flying to and from both hemispheres throughout the year, will go through the roof.

But if that has been enough to concentrate the minds of Aidan O’Brien’s team at Ballydoyle, then the pastoral peace of Co Tipperary remains an oasis of calm amongst the maelstrom of emotions that So You Think’s presence in Ireland has already provoked.

An awful lot of Aussie sentiment has been invested in So You Think too. And when such hopes and dreams are invested in a horse by Australians it tends to be in a big way.

Even almost 80 years after his death there remains a lingering pain that the greatest Aussie racing legend of all, Phar Lap, was ever sent to North America in 1932. The great Melbourne Cup winner made a massive impression in his sole start there before he died – supposedly from arsenic administered by the Mob – and his remains brought home. His skeleton remains in the National Museum in New Zealand where he was bred. His heart is in the National Museum of Australia. It is the single most popular exhibit.

Even today Phar Lap remains a symbol of Anzac excellence sabotaged by outsiders, an equine Gallipoli.

So You Think was also bred in New Zealand, a son of Coolmore’s shuttling Irish stallion, High Chaparral. Like Phar Lap he also made his name across the Tasman Sea. So You Think has been acclaimed as the best seen on Australia’s racecourses for a long time, a reputation left untarnished by finishing only third in the country’s most famous race, the Melbourne Cup, last November when the extreme two-mile distance was patently too far for a horse with such potent speed.

It was soon after that when Malaysian businessman Dato Tan Chin Nam sold a controlling interest to Coolmore, a move that came as a surprise to So You Think’s former trainer, the legendary Bart Cummings. A man regarded as Australia’s equivalent of Vincent O’Brien but with an irascible quotability that can make him journalistic gold, “Baaaart” went predictably “tonto” at having a horse he reckoned as the best he’d ever trained sprung from him.

Words like “disgrace” and “tragedy” were flung around a media whose natural inclination to dismiss anything even mildly different to the Aussie way of doing things can’t quite disguise a slight chip on the shoulder when it comes to competition with the outside racing world.

No one has resented the growing international influence on the Melbourne Cup more than Cummings and the failure to comprehend the challenge facing So You Think in Europe rather than routing the locals in Melbourne and Sydney was summed up in his insular dismissal of racing in Ireland and the UK as being “not worth two bob”.

Since it’s that very racing that threw up the horse that sired So You Think, and also the cream of Coolmore’s stallion team which have transformed Australian bloodlines over the last couple of decades, it is easy to dismiss such comments. Dermot Weld’s Melbourne Cup exploits with Vintage Crop and Media Puzzle also present a convincing argument against them.

But if the language is sulphuric, it hints at the depth of emotion behind So You Think’s attempt to confirm he can be as good outside of Australia as within. Over the last decade, the country’s sprinters have proven themselves in international competition. But there has been a noticeable reluctance to take on the world’s best in the most prestigious middle-distance events. No self-respecting Ocker sports fan will ever admit to suspecting the Aussie stuff might be inferior, but a rational analysis suggests the real strength in depth in the races that really matter is in Britain, France and Ireland.

The good news for So You Think’s fan club though is that whatever about the overall depth of talent, their almost black champion with the distinctive brand on his flank could just be as freakishly superior to everything else as Bart Co believe.

Australian racing experts go back 30 years to conjure up a name worthy of comparison with him. Kingston Town won three Cox Plates – the Southern Hemisphere equivalent of the Arc – among a host of other Group Ones.

Any horse deserving of being ranked alongside him is major news. In Australia, damn near every step taken by So You Think was newsworthy. For a voracious hack-pack used to even a curmudgeonly figure like Cummings playing ball with them, the lack of information from Ballydoyle since So You Think’s transfer, and O’Brien’s refusal to deal with any media except at the races, is baffling. A few “tweets” from the trainer’s wife on the horse’s progress is regarded as a long way from sufficient.

“He must think he lives in some medieval castle. Not one trainer here would pull a stunt like Aidan is doing. It is totally unacceptable,” says the leading racing writer, Adrian Dunn, of Melbourne’s Herald Sun newspaper.

“I can ring up Bart Cummings right now and ask him what he thinks of the Prince Of Wales’s Stakes and he’ll talk as long as I want. He might not tell much but he’ll talk. Even private trainers here, like Peter Snowden who trains for Sheikh Mohammed, are always accessible. We’ve been told Aidan is a very private trainer and isn’t talking to anyone. But we just don’t accept that sort of behaviour,” he adds.

What comments O’Brien has made about So You Think have been effusive in their praise, suggesting he hasn’t seen the like of him at Ballydoyle in the 15 years he has been in charge of the famous training facility.

Since there is usually at least one potential stallion a season which cranks the Coolmore PR machine into full waxing gear, it might not do to get too carried away on the hype. O’Brien, Magnier Co are not allergic to publicity, per se, just any negative stuff. But even allowing for that, what under-the-wire reports there are from Ballydoyle suggest So You Think really is an exceptional animal.

Even veteran work-watchers who were around during the peak years of some of Vincent O’Brien’s best horses have apparently been impressed by what they’ve seen. And it was impossible to ignore the quietly appreciative noises made by Ryan Moore when the former British champion jockey sat on So You Think for the first time in last month’s Tattersalls Gold Cup.

Already there is speculation about what horse Moore might ride if a mouth-watering clash between the Aussie star and last year’s Derby and Arc hero Workforce goes ahead, possibly in next month’s Eclipse at Sandown. A rather gentle question along those lines, lobbed at Moore recently in a TV interview, resulted in an exasperated exit stage right by the rider. Quite what the Aussie media would make of that is not hard to imagine.

Much harder to picture is the response should the French runner, Planteur, or any other Prince Of Wales’s Stakes runner, get in the way of So You Think on Wednesday.

“Beyond a mile there isn’t a horse on the planet capable of beating So You Think and in the next six months he will prove it,” a senior official Australian handicapper said recently.

Even for a nation not renowned for any sporting inferiority complex, such statements are notably bullish.

The treat for Royal Ascot’s masses this week is that So You Think looks capable of walking the walk as well as his compatriots are of talking the talk.

STAR COULD GENERATE BREEDING FEES OF €25M A YEAR

"HE IS a horse with that wow factor. He is an imposing individual with an exceptionally strong physique. You can see why the guys fell for him and paid a lot of money," says John Osborne, chief executive of the Irish National Stud and an acknowledged bloodstock expert.

Osborne estimates So You Think's exploits in Australia already mean he could command a stud fee down under of Aus$75,000 (about €55,000.) Depending on how the horse fares in Europe's best races this summer, a fee of €30,000 in the Northern Hemisphere may be realistic when he retires from racing.

Presuming So You Think covers 150 mares a season in each hemisphere, such financial calculations could result in him generating breeding fees of over €25 million a year.

"Sea The Stars started at a much higher fee but he was exceptional in every sense. For middle distance horses, it is rare for them to start off at a fee of more than 30,000.

"Both Galileo and Montjeu started at 25,000. It takes a hell of a horse to break out of those lines," Osborne says. "But So You Think looks to have a lot to offer."

– BRIAN O'CONNOR