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Australia. The best racehorse Aiden Obrien has ever trained? Category - Blog

    • 21
    • st
    • December

Australia. The Best Racehorse

Aiden O’Brien has ever trained?

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

According to Yorkshire folklore, the last horse home in the St Leger has snow on its tail. In view of the subsequent disqualification of last year’s disgraced winner on doping grounds – given the obvious double meaning of the word ‘snow’, I cannot help but feel there is a cheap joke concealed there.

However, I will let that be; to almost quote Bernard Cribbens: You never get nowhere by being too hasty (substitute cheap in this instance); besides, this whole premise is becoming too convoluted (you never get nowhere by being too convoluted).

Undeniably the weather is turning. By the end of Saturday we will be drifting away from summer, in racing terms that leaves us with the Autumn Double, the Prix de L’arc De Triomphe, The Racing Post and the Breeders’ Cup. Then it is Cheltenham, the Charlie Hall, the Tingle Creek and the slide to Christmas.

Forget those terminal places in Switzerland, following racing is one way of getting through your life quickly.

Why, it seems only a few months ago we were here last year attempting to crack the autumn nuggets, and only a month or two since we embarked on the Classic merry-go-round back in the spring.

Strangely, time plays a similar trick during holidays, when a fortnight in new surroundings invariably seems to last longer than the same period spent undertaking the old tired routine at home.

Whether we accept it or not, this is where we are right now: on the verge of the last two months of the 2013 Flat Racing Season. Naturally, in between the big grandstand events, we have the odd wisp of promise alluding to next year’s Classics and beyond.

One such moment came last Saturday evening when no doubt quite a few of us were getting them in at the local. All right, at a few minutes after 5.15pm, it was a little early; but I am aware that for some – with family obligations, or just a wife that must be obeyed stalking the kitchen at home with a timer in her hand – a pint has to be squeezed in when possible. No such worries this end, he said with one eye on the other room!

So, to rewind to last Saturday and to Leopardstown and the Icon Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Trial Stakes (Group 3), where we saw the reappearance of the 2014 Derby favourite, Free Eagle. This was a strange event in many ways.

Only four runners turned out and after his impressive debut in a race that worked out and a reputation that preceded him, including an endorsement from his legendary trainer, Dermot Weld – stating Free Eagle was the best he had trained – the son of High Chaparral was sent off at 2/5. Looking all set to pounce on hapless opponents, he strode to the lead early in the straight only to be burned-off in the exhaust of new kid in town, Australia.

Kingfisher (beaten eight lengths by Free Eagle on debut) was only beaten three-and-half this time. Either he has improved by at least four lengths or Free Eagle has regressed by that amount.

Australia is almost certainly the better horse, but Free Eagle deserves another opportunity to justify the hype.

Aidan O’Brien was quick to dub Australia as possibly the best horse he has trained. Therefore his star ascends beyond that of his predecessors of this homage: George Washington, Kingsbarns and Camelot. The king is dead – long live the king!

Australia looks the part. Athletic and a good mover, it appears he won on merit on Saturday without being rousted so to do.

That said there are just the three niggles to address – one (the Kingfisher form line) I have touched on; the other two are worth mentioning, even though one of them is fragile at best.

If Australia is the racing machine we are led to believe, why then was Free Eagle allowed to start at such a short price and he to win at such a comparatively big one? It is not as if they conduct work at Ballydoyle under the cover of darkness. Time will tell on that score. For now, like the continent, Australia is a partly submerged huge chunk of reality. Clearly, it is not worth trying to find one to beat him in the Group 1 Racing Post at Doncaster.

My other reservation is probably peculiar to me alone. Sue Magnier is responsible for naming most of the inmates from Ballydoyle and I presume she decided here.

Given her track record with titles as rich as Ernest Hemingway, Stravinsky, Yeats and Soldier Of Fortune to name but four, how on earth did she come up with Australia for a colt that is by Galileo and out of Ouija Board? The trick when naming horses is to try and incorporate the sire and dam into a name that is both witty and pertinent.

Australia fails on both counts. Any number of permutations exists with such parentage as Galileo and Ouija Board. Australia would not appear to be the most obvious.

Mrs Magnier could have gone the See The Future, Distant Planet or Navigate The Stars route – to sound more learned she could have tried Telescopium or Piscis Austrinus. But Australia?

This epithet may prove a millstone round the collar of this son of Galileo. In a piece littered with ye olde sayings: That way madness lies…