When Aidan O’Brien told Kevin O’Ryan on Racing TV last week that a low-grade infection has been running through the Ballydoyle string for a couple of months, things suddenly made a lot more sense.
The ridiculous Group One-laden momentum of the early summer being gradually lost, the flood of top-flight winners reduced to a still very respectable trickle.
The Irish Champions Festival was a perfect snap-shot of how the last ten weeks or so have been. Darkness Falls thunders to Derby favouritism to spark talk of a 2027 Triple Crown, Sun Goddess sends an instant and striking response to Musical Times’ impressive May Hill success when raising the bar significantly higher in the Moyglare.
Scandinavia did what he always does, dug out another win in the Irish St Leger. There’s no better stayer around than him in 2026 and in the absence of Trawlerman, nothing to seriously test his mettle either.
Three Group One victories. Aidan would have taken that on the Friday night wouldn’t he?
But there were high-profile blow-outs too. Precise and True Love were way short of their best behind Blue Bolt in the Matron. Constitution River again ran below expectation in the Irish Champion. Alpha failed to fire behind Sun Goddess, Giant Sequoia and Haffner both went into the National Stakes with strong form claims but finished sixth and seventh to Folsom Blues, over 11 lengths adrift of the winner and 23 and 28 pounds respectively below their previous run on Timeform performance ratings.
Christmas Day and Pierre Bonnard blew out in the Betfred St Leger, the former coughing on the way to the start. Running a Derby winner was a big call in those circumstances and as it turned out the wrong one. He’s now been put away for a four-year-old career that will need to quickly gather momentum.
Trainers up and down the land battle similar problems season after season, O’Brien himself will have encountered it on countless previous occasions too. It’s what every stable fears, Willie Mullins regularly references the fear of the black dog arriving in the build-up to the Cheltenham Festival as it did with Nicky Henderson as recently as 2025.
And even with the resources available at Ballydoyle, the veterinary and scientific expertise, there’s still an element of guesswork involved too.
“That’s one of those things you’re never prepared for,” O'Brien said before racing on Sunday. “Obviously for the last couple of months we’ve been fighting a very low-grade infection in the whole place through all the horses, two-year-olds and three-year-olds. It pops up every now and then and then disappears. It pops up in their blood, pops up in their scopes and you can’t be sure where it is.
“Obviously before we run any horse they’re always blooded and scoped to make sure they’re perfect, but you don’t know.”
But it will pass, the question is whether it will be in time for some key autumn rebuilds.
There’s Benvenuto Cellini, the Irish Derby winner who ran very well when third to Kalpana in the King George at Ascot. The Prix Niel was his stepping stone to the Arc but he was flat and sluggish. He struggled to even get to his pacemaker Montreal let alone take a decisive advantage over the closers and finished a tame fifth.
Initially connections pointed to the tactical nature of the contest being all against him – but this week on an excellent video on Coolmore.com, the trainer revealed: “He did give a few coughs for a few days when he got back. His coughing is starting to disappear, but his scoping is perfect and he should be fine come Arc time if the ground is nice, if not he’ll go to America.”
Beating Daryz in Paris is a tall order for any horse, so a fast-ground Breeders’ Cup Turf might be the spot for redemption.
On the same Arc Trials card Gstaad finally got the chance to step out of Bow Echo’s shadow in the Prix du Moulin. This was his day to shine. But for the first time in 2026 he fluffed his lines. A colt who you could previously set your clock by, was only third behind Erdenali and 12 pounds below his Sussex Stakes form.
Constitution River didn’t run badly in the Irish Champion, but never looked like winning inside the final two furlongs either. Ryan Moore said he hung left throughout. There was no zip about him, no acceleration. Suddenly the Dee Stakes, French Derby and Coral-Eclipse winner is on the “something to prove” list too.
He’s long been regarded as the best three-year-old colt at Ballydoyle but York and Leopardstown now have to be left behind. But unlike the Derby winner, we might get to see him again this term. And it impacts Gstaad too.
“There’s a chance that we’ve been doing the wrong thing with him (Constitution River) and he’s the miler and Gstaad is the mile-and-a-quarter horse. They are both top colts, we just have to decide with him do we go to Ascot," the trainer said this week.
“It’s possible he could go to the mile, and does Gstaad go to Ascot and go up to a mile and a quarter (Champion Stakes)? At the start of the year, we always thought he would go up (in trip).”
This is a tried and tested formula for the Ballydoyle genius, well the trip dropper that is.
Giant’s Causeway came back to the mile of the QEII (where he was second) after winning the Eclipse, Juddmonte International and Irish Champion in the year 2000, and that’s when there were just two weeks between Leopardstown and Ascot.
Hawk Wing, Duke Of Marmalade, Rip Van Winkle, Minding and Churchill have all also dropped back from the 10 furlongs in the Irish Champion to the mile of the QEII since then, with Rip Van Winkle and Minding doing so successfully, so O’Brien certainly has a template to follow.
But the 2026 one is different. It has to be.
Minnie Hauk and Diamond Necklace are the two stablemates who could join or replace Benvenuto Cellini in the Arc. The former hasn’t quite scaled her 2025 heights this season, the latter lost her unbeaten record with her own off-day in the Prix Jean Et Louis Romanet at Deauville in August.
O’Brien still has the firepower to take aim at the big worldwide autumn pots, but for the first time in a while, little momentum. We now know why. He knows why.
A man who’s re-written the record books year after year, is in a familiar position with the top-class horses at his disposal, but an unfamiliar one in terms of how they head into their final major targets.
It will be fascinating to see how it all plays out and maybe Newmarket next weekend, might provide a crucial clue or three.
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