Aidan O'Brien is right when he suggests that Powerscourt represents his best chance of success at the Breeders' Cup.
True, the four-year-old is up against hot favourite Kitten's Joy in the Turf but he is a pretty smart performer and he proved himself the best horse in the race in the Arlington Million in August.
On his only subsequent outing, in last month's Irish Champion Stakes, he looked as if he was going to spring a surprise as he led going to the furlong marker only to falter.
This was almost certainly the point where he pulled a muscle in his quarters.
He recovered quite quickly and was back in strong work before the end of the month.
All his racing this season has been over ten furlongs but that has probably been as much to do with boosting his stallion value as anything else.
Last year he won the Great Voltigeur over a mile and a half and he was also a close third in the Irish St Leger so the Turf trip could well be just up his street.
O'Brien relishes the challenge of taking on the Americans in their own back yard and he has a fine record at the Breeder's Cup meetings.
This is the seventh successive year that he has had runners and he has been successful in each of the last three. He had a total of 24 runners and nine of them have finished in the first three.
He came home from the first three meetings – at Churchill Downs twice and at Gulfstream – saying how difficult it was to win races there.
There is no doubt that the two-year-old races and the Classic are the hardest of all for European horses to win despite the success of Johannesburg three years ago.
Neither Scandinavia or Mona Lisa are in that league – Joburg, as Mick Kinane called him, had already won the Norfolk, Phoenix Stakes, Prix Morny and Middle Park – but the filly lived up to her home reputation in the Fillies Mile at Ascot when she might well have won had she not been so badly interfered with.
Scandinavia showed significantly improved form to take second in the Royal Lodge and is almost certainly still on the upgrade.
Both two-year-olds should get into the shake-up.
I find it difficult to enthuse about Antonius Pius in the Mile even though O'Brien believes that a fast pace on a tight track will suit him.
I would have thought that the American style of racing, in particular going hard from the gate, would be all against him.
In addition his habit of throwing his races away – either by jinxing as at Longchamp or running into the backs of other horses Sussex Stakes-style – makes him one avoid.
Yesterday is a different matter.
She was a high class, if often unlucky filly, last season when she finished up by taking third in the Filly & Mare Turf.
Her well-documented attack of colitis sidelined her for most of this term but the way she ran in the Prix de l'Opera suggests she may again make the frame.
SELECTIONS:
6.55 Mona Lisa (ew)
8.45 Yesterday (ew)
9.20 Scandinavia (ew)
9.55 Powerscourt-NAP.
BREEDERS' CUP NEWS
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