RACING:AUSTRALIANS AREN'T renowned for their understatement, but the widespread belief Down Under that So You Think might be just about the best racehorse in the world right now didn't look outrageously off the mark when the Aussie superstar made a 10-length winning debut in Europe at the Curragh yesterday.
As a 2 to 13 favourite for the Group Three High Chaparral Mooresbridge Stakes, and facing five opponents who would struggle to qualify as second division, anything else but an impressive victory would have been a let-down.
But the horse who won back-to-back Cox Plates, Australia’s equivalent of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, and whose winter transfer to Aidan O’Brien’s Ballydoyle yard provoked more than a little Antipodean angst, impressed hugely in appearance before having little more than an exercise gallop out on the track.
Bookmaker reaction was to cut So You Think to 5 to 2 favourite for the King George at Ascot in July and an 8 to 1 shot for the Arc itself in October. Before that, though, he will return to the Curragh in 19 days for the Group One Tattersalls Gold Cup.
O’Brien, possibly mindful of some hurt feelings on the other side of the globe about the local hero’s transfer to the Northern Hemisphere, was in the sort of full complimentary mode that only the top horses from Ballydoyle can provoke.
“What this horse really is is a prodigy of Australian racing and breeding and training,” he said. “He has the most incredible reputation of any horse in the world and we are lucky to have got him. He’s the most incredible specimen.”
Quite what supporters of the Guineas hero Frankel will make of that is debatable, and no doubt there will be Kiwis only too eager to point out that So You Think is actually New Zealand bred. But even a long way short of full readiness, there was a power to So You Think yesterday that makes a reported purchase price valuing him at an approximate €50 million seem not too outlandish.
“He’s in everything and I don’t think distance matters too much to him,” O’Brien added. “But we will take it one day at a time and come back for the Tattersalls.”
The champion trainer’s focus for the rest of this week will be on Chester, where St Nicholas Abbey, the last horse to provoke serious Coolmore hyperbole, will appear in Friday’s Ormonde Stakes, while Master Of Hounds flew out to the US last night to run in Saturday night’s Kentucky Derby.
Emiyna has classic ambitions of her own in the Irish 1,000 Guineas after a short-head defeat of Lolly For Dolly in the Athasi Stakes for John Oxx and Johnny Murtagh.
“She’s by a sire who’s had two Kentucky Derby winners (Maria’s Mon), but I’m not sure she will stay beyond a mile. She will go for the Guineas and, while she needs to keep improving, we do like her,” Oxx said.
Murtagh went on to complete a treble on the day with Dance Secretary in the seven-furlong maiden and Casbah Rock in the 10-furlong handicap.
Imperial Rome will be targeted at the French 2,000 Guineas at Longchamp after holding off Oxx’s Zabarajad by a head in the Listed Tetrarch Stakes.
Tipperary trainer Hilary McLoughlin saddled her first winner with Phoebe Van Gelder after a desperate finish to the Dermot Early Memorial Handicap.
“We came here for a run because we knew the Curragh ground would be safe,” said McLoughlin, who has been training near Cashel for 18 months. “We would love to get some black type with her.”
