Auguste Rodin gamble makes for compelling 2000 Guineas at Newmarket
Our man is hoping for a memorable renewal of the QIPCO 2000 Guineas as contrasting styles and a huge gamble add plenty into the mix this weekend.
It’s four years since Aidan O’Brien last won the 2000 Guineas. Four years! That’s his joint longest losing sequence in the first Classic of the season since he first trained the winner of the race in 1998 and the last time it happened it was because Sea The Stars, Makfi and Frankel were crowned on the Rowley Mile. Aidan, all is forgiven.
The last time it happened O’Brien broke the losing spell with Camelot, a horse good enough to win a Guineas, a Derby and almost a Triple Crown - two hallowed words within the Ballydoyle sanctum, not so much whispered but spoken about quite clearly when it comes to the 2023 aims of 2000 Guineas favourite Auguste Rodin.
“If we have a horse who could do the Triple Crown, he would definitely be the one,” O’Brien said of Auguste Rodin last month. He’s 14/1 at Betfair to become the first horse since Nijinksy in 1970 to achieve the feat. And in Saturday’s Guineas, what you would consider to be the ‘tricky’ leg, he’s been backed into as short as 11/8 as of Wednesday morning.
This is now a sustained plunge. When he crossed the line in front in October’s Vertem Futurity Trophy at Doncaster, he was cut to 5/1 for the Guineas, but the bookmakers were still not sure who was the main Newmarket hope from his own yard. Stablemate Little Big Bear, the outstanding juvenile of 2022, was on the sidelines at the time but he still sat atop the Guineas betting. Not anymore.
O’Brien’s 2000 Guineas record is, of course, terrific. He’s won the race a record 10 times and after Camelot he won the race four times in the next seven years. But being a hot favourite from Ballydoyle does not automatically translate to 2000 Guineas success.
Of the nine O’Brien-trained horses sent off at 5/2 or shorter for the 2000 Guineas, three have won; George Washington at 6/4 in 2006, Camelot at 15/8 in 2012 and Churchill at 6/4 in 2017. The two shortest price horses (so far) both lost; St Nicholas Abbey at evens in 2010 and Air Force Blue at 4/5 in 2016, while there were defeats for Hawk Wing (6/4), One Cool Cat (15/8), Ten Sovereigns (9/4) and Australia (5/2), as well.
The puzzle for punters is deciding where Auguste Rodin fits in that list. For me he’s a St Nicholas Abbey, Camelot, Australia type. Only one of that trio got away with the mile of the Guineas and that was Camelot in a weak renewal.
For a middle-distance horse to win this Guineas they’re going to have to have serious pace and an awful lot of class to see off what looks like a bunch of horses that have the required tools to win top-level mile races at three.
Chaldean, the Dewhurst winner, is one of them. Sakheer, the spectacular Mill Reef winner, is another. Royal Scotsman, a head behind Chaldean in the Dewhurst, has solid credentials. Last year’s winning trainer, Charlie Appleby, has an unbeaten Gimcrack winner in Noble Style and the unlucky Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf second Silver Knott. Karl Burke has a Craven winner in Indestructable and an interesting second string in Holloway Bay.
The bulk of them look like milers, but if there’s one horse in the field that has the pace to blow the race apart it’s Auguste Rodin’s own stablemate, Little Big Bear.
It’s difficult to think of a Guineas where O’Brien has fielded two horses with such contrasting styles. Auguste Rodin, bred for a Derby, perhaps an Arc, against Little Big Bear, a Windsor Castle Stakes winner over five furlongs at two who has already had the six-furlong Commonwealth Cup nominated as a possible post-Guineas target.
Yet Little Big Bear might just be a freak.
He certainly looked freakish in the Group 1 Keeneland Phoenix Stakes at the Curragh last August, where he stormed away from three Group 2 winners by seven lengths and more in an astonishing final furlong. That was over six furlongs and it was the performance of a sprinter, but his pedigree is far from precocious. He’s a half-brother to 1m2f, 1m4f and 2m winners, out of a dam by Bering – just like Harbinger and Stradivarius, two other freaks, were. Such a pedigree suggests the mile won’t be an issue.
Little Big Bear is the formbook choice, too, there is no doubt, but the setback that has kept him off the track since that Phoenix Stakes win, combined with the market vibes for stablemate Auguste Rodin (and his own subsequent market weakness) have to be taken into consideration.
The stage is set for an enthralling race. There is rain forecast on Friday but perhaps not enough to turn the ground testing, conditions that would swing the balance in favour of Auguste Rodin - not that I’m suggesting he needs softer ground, but because it would naturally make this Guineas more of a test of stamina.
On nice spring ground we should get a fantastic horse race, 21 years on from O’Brien’s Rock Of Gibraltar chinning his better-fancied stablemate Hawk Wing in this contest. A month later Hawk Wing was beaten again by a stablemate, High Chapparal, in the Derby, another memorable duel between two Ballydoyle horses that was enhanced by their contrasting styles.
Saturday’s Guineas looks more than a two-horse race and more open than the betting suggests. But the confidence behind ‘Triple Crown’ hopeful Auguste Rodin adds significant further intrigue, as the brilliant O’Brien bids to end his relative cold streak in the first Classic of the turf season. Bring it on.
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