“What price would you back Auguste Rodin at to run in another horse race?”
So asked Graham Cunningham on this week’s Sporting Life Racing Podcast.
The son of Deep Impact was expected to be retired hot on the hooves of his brilliant win in the Breeders’ Cup Turf at the weekend but MV Magnier offered up the tantalising possibility that he could race on at four.
Then his name didn’t appear on the Coolmore stallion prospectus for next year fuelling speculation that connections had opted to roll the dice and plot a route to the 2024 Breeders’ Cup Classic.
However Cunningham feels it remains unlikely saying: “As the best son of Deep Impact to race - A Shin Hikari was probably as good once or twice on ratings but he’s been a bust at stud - this horse has an incredible price tag on him. I’m not sure I’d take 4/1 or 5/1 for him to race again.
“I know there’s a conversation ongoing but given he’d probably stand at six figures and cover over 150 mares or so a year, to give up that opportunity and global appeal to continue racing, given he’s blobbed twice, I’d want 4/1 or 5/1.”
Timeform Flat Editor David Johnson isn’t so sure though.
“I get the feeling that they do fancy coming back and having a go with him and it sounds like they would love to take him to the Breeders’ Cup Classic next year,” he said.
“Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I thought it was very interesting he didn’t appear in the stallion line-up Coolmore released on Monday but obviously there’s plenty of time to add him to it before the covering season starts. I was thinking I’d probably take a little bit over even money for him to race again.”
But Billy Nash is another who feels we’ve seen Auguste Rodin on the racecourse for the final time.
“I can’t see it happening for a couple of reasons. First, if you listen back to Ryan Moore’s interview on horseback directly after the Turf he was talking about Auguste Rodin in the past tense; ‘It’s been brilliant to be associated with this horse’, ‘We’ve had some great days’ all that sort of stuff.
“I got the impression then he didn’t think this horse was coming back.
“The first two things MV Magnier said afterwards were ‘we could stand him here (in America) or somewhere else’ then he said there was a definite possibility he could be brought back (for the Classic).
“I think it’s going to look good on the page that Aidan said he floated on the dirt and they could have brought him back but I don’t see it because of the way Aidan has been talking all year, the fact he’s so valuable and the fact he’s such a great stallion prospect.
“I know they have Saxon Warrior who is the same cross by Deep Impact out of a Galileo mare but you can’t say he’s been absolutely pulling up trees as a stallion himself and Auguste Rodin has a much better profile than him. He’s a Group One winner at two, a Group One winner at a mile-and-a-quarter and a mile-and-a-half.
“If you look back over the years at Aidan O’Brien’s very good three-year-olds, not many have stayed in training at four. Galileo, Rock Of Gibraltar, Henrythenavigator, Mastercraftsman, Australia, all these horses didn’t.
“Yes some did but the really good three-year-olds tend to retire and I think they’ll do the same with Auguste Rodin.”
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