I’ve often marvelled at how trainers manage to take seemingly significant defeats in their stride.
Take Aidan O’Brien, for example. What was going through his mind two-and-a-half furlongs out in the Gladness Stakes at the weekend?
The tempo increases, the camera angle changes to a side-on view and push all of a sudden is very much coming to shove for Albert Einstein.
And the brilliant speed he’d talked of on the Ballydoyle gallops is missing. In three strides it was clear he was going to be beaten - and well beaten at that. Two minutes later and the Betfred 2000 Guineas favourite is a 25/1 chance for the Newmarket Classic and there’s no stampede to Oddschecker to find out who is offering said price.
The handler, dressed for the elements, is on Racing TV soon afterwards and the plane ticket to Cambridgeshire on the first Saturday of May is cancelled.
