Donn McClean looks back on a sensational week for Ireland at Royal Ascot, as Aidan and Joseph O'Brien enjoyed 12 winners between them.
Harbour Master won the Coventry Stakes in 1997. The stalls were against the stands rail for the Coventry in 1997, and the numbering was the reverse of what it is now, right to left as opposed to inside to outside, so Harbour Master’s draw in stall three saw him start off his race close to the stands rail.
He wasn’t that quickly away though, and he was squeezed out of it a little at the start, with the result that, when they crossed the path after they had raced for two furlongs, he was no better than 13th, just three rivals behind him.
Christy Roche had to get after him long before they got to the two-furlong pole and, if they had been betting in-running in 1997, the Bluebird colt surely would have traded at a multiple of his SP of 16/1.
The picture changed gradually but inexorably. Leader Hayil came under a ride, Michael Hills in the Sheikh Hamdan colours but under the black cap. Favourite Desert Prince came under a ride, Olivier Peslier in the black and white Lucayan Stud colours. Bold Fact came under a ride and moved to his right, as Kieren Fallon quickly pulled his whip through into his right hand.
All the while, Harbour Master was making progress towards the leaders. Hayil moved a little to his right in front of him, and Christy Roche aimed for the gap that presented itself between him and the rail. He got into the gap too, just inside the furlong marker. He got past Hayil and he got past Desert Prince. He probably couldn’t see Bold Fact, who had drifted all the way across to the inside rail, but it didn’t matter. Harbour Master powered to the line, getting stronger the closer he got to it and, in the end, he had one and a half lengths to spare over Desert Prince, with Bold Fact another half-length back in third.
Harbour Master was Aidan O’Brien’s first Royal Ascot winner, and he was the only Irish-trained winner at Royal Ascot in 1997.
It was just over a year earlier that Aidan O’Brien had sent out Urubande to win the Sun Alliance Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival, and it was nine months before Istabraq would win his first Champion Hurdle.
The new master of Ballydoyle had just three Group 1 wins on his CV then: Desert King’s National Stakes, Desert King’s Irish 2000 Guineas and Classic Park’s Irish 1000 Guineas. Desert King would win the Irish Derby too 12 days later.
The Ballydoyle floodgates at Royal Ascot didn’t open then though.
Aidan O’Brien had no winners at Royal Ascot in 1998. He had two in 1999, Bach in the Chesham Stakes and he won another Coventry with Fasliyev, and, when Giant’s Causeway battled on to get back up and win the St James’s Palace Stakes by a head the following year, he provided his trainer with his only Royal Ascot victory of 2000.
Royal Ascot 2001 was a notable one though for Aidan O’Brien, his four winners that year – Black Minnaloushe, Landseer, Mozart and Johannesbourg – taking him to his first Leading Trainer award at the meeting. Again, though, it didn’t start the avalanche of Royal Ascot winners from Ballydoyle that was forthcoming. Three winners in 2002, the year in which Mark Johnston was crowned Leading Trainer for the first time with four, none in 2003, two in 2004, one in 2005, two more in 2006.
2003 was his last blank year though, and the flow since then has been extraordinary. Four winners in 2007 was enough for Aidan O’Brien to claim the Leading Trainer award for the second time, and six in 2008 saw him claim the Leading Trainer award for the third time.
'Truly remarkable achievement'
Going into this year’s Royal meetings, Aidan O’Brien had been crowned Leading Trainer 13 times in total, including at eight of the previous 11 meetings and at three of the last four. He was sitting on 96 winners, as Ascot prepared the 100-winner milestone saddlecloth before the week started. Great Barrier Reef and Mission Central on Tuesday took him to 98, and Victorious on Wednesday took him to 99. So the stage was set for Scandinavia on Thursday, in the Gold Cup, and he duly delivered, battling on in typically tenacious style to get up and beat the evergreen Trawlerman by a head.
It goes without saying, it’s a truly remarkable achievement. Royal Ascot week is one of the most important weeks in the world of thoroughbred racing. Every winner there is fought for and cherished. Aidan O’Brien’s 100 winners span two different millennia, four different decades and 10 different jockeys. Three more winners after Scandinavia’s Gold Cup took his total to 103 for his career and to seven for his week – Leading Trainer at Royal Ascot for the 14th time – which equalled his tally of 2016, which equalled Sir Henry Cecil’s record tally of 1987.
'Five races with five different jockeys'
Joseph O’Brien had a remarkable week too. You only have to go back to 2022 to find his first Royal Ascot winner, State Of Rest in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes, no less. Five winners this year more than doubled his career tally and means that he has now trained nine Royal Ascot winners, three more than the number that he has ridden.
The breadth of Joseph O’Brien’s achievements to date as a trainer is as impressive as its depth. He has scaled the pinnacles of National Hunt racing. He has trained six Cheltenham Festival winners and two Melling Chase winners and two Galway Hurdle winners and an Irish Gold Cup winner and an Ascot Chase winner and a Liverpool Hurdle winner and a Galway Plate winner and a King George winner and, if the bob of a head had gone the other way, it would have been a dual King George winner.
On the flat he has trained three National Stakes winners and two Pretty Polly winners and an Irish Derby winner and an Irish St Leger winner, as well as a Fillies’ Mile winner and a St Leger winner and a Prince of Wales’s Stakes winner and, recently, an Epsom Oaks winner. Further afield, he has trained a Breeders’ Cup winner and a Saratoga Derby winner and a Prix Ganay winner and a Grosser Preis von Berlin winner and a Cox Plate winner and, of course, famously, two Melbourne Cup winners.
The five races that he won at Royal Ascot this week ranged from the six-furlong Windsor Castle Stakes to the two-and-a-half-mile Ascot Stakes, and from the 11-runner Group 2 Queen’s Vase to the 30-runner Sandringham Stakes. He won races with two-year-old colts and three-year-old fillies and three-year-old colts and four-year-old geldings, and he won his five races with five different jockeys on board. He had the 1-2 in the Ascot Stakes and he went close in the Ribblesdale Stakes with Johanna Walsh and in the Chesham Stakes with On Just Terms, who was having his first official run on the track.
'Like London busses'
That Chesham Stakes was won by Nola Soul, a first Royal Ascot winner for Fozzy Stack. The Justify colt was game in winning too. He was keen enough through the early part of the race, and he was in the front rank from early, and he hit the front outside the furlong marker. But he responded gallantly to the urgings of Seamie Heffernan, who was riding his seventh Royal Ascot winner, 14 years after he had ridden his first.
Craig Bernick’s horse won by a half a length, but he left the impression that he had more in hand than that. And he was winning the Chesham Stakes less than 24 hours after the horse whom he had beaten into second place in his maiden at Leopardstown last month, King Of Cloughan, had won the Windsor Castle Stakes. There could be a fair bit more to come.
And just over 48 hours after he had won his first, Fozzy Stack claimed the second victory of his career at Royal Ascot when Thesecretadversary got home by a neck in the Jersey Stakes from Take Charge Star, the pair of them clear of their rivals. They had it between them on the far side, stalls two and one, from a long way out, and they stretched four and a half lengths clear of their rivals.
Like London busses, said Fozzy Stack. Two runners at the meeting this year, two winners.
Johnny Murtagh was out of luck with Take Charge Star, who ran a cracker and who surely has a Group race in him on this evidence. Murtagh, who rode 43 Royal Ascot winners during his career in the saddle, and who won the Sandringham in 2021 as a trainer with Create Belief, had just three runners at the meeting this year, and they all ran well. Asakir moved into his race nicely at the top of the home straight in the Queen’s Vase on Wednesday, and he was only beaten a total of three and three-quarter lengths in the end by his old rival Limestone, while Believed ran a big race in the King George V Stakes on Thursday, going down by a half a length and a head.
Willie McCreery ran just one, Jancis, and she probably put up a career-best performance in finishing second to Blue Bolt in the Duke of Cambridge Stakes on Wednesday. David Marnane also ran just one, Jamestown, who kept on well to finish third in the 30-runner Britannia.
Just shows you, the level of the challenge, the intensity of competition. Some week.
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