Donn McClean on the challenges facing the Irish Derby

Lambourn looked beaten. No question. If you didn’t know the race and if you didn’t know the horses, you would have said that the horse on the near side, the one who had come from just behind the leaders and ranged up on the outside, was the more likely winner.

Serious Contender didn’t get past Lambourn. Watching the race live, watching the side-on view, it looked like he might have gone the bob of a head in front as they raced just inside the furlong marker. But the excellent aerial view told you that he didn’t, that he was always playing catch-up, despite the fact that he looked the likely winner, as evidenced by the fact that he traded at one point at 1.4 in-running.

And it was at that point, just inside the furlong marker, that Lambourn dug deepest of all. We’re getting to learn more and more about Aidan O’Brien’s horse as the races flow under the bridge. Powerful and classy in the Chester Vase, strong and relentless in the Epsom Derby, resolute in the Irish Derby.

His racing style suggests that he’ll be even better going out in trip, you’re thinking more St Leger than Champion Stakes, that a mile and a half is a minimum for him. But we also know that he is hugely effective at this trip. Aidan O’Brien mentioned the King George as well as the Leger afterwards, as well as the Arc, and, a dual Derby winner, he would obviously be a big contender for a King George if that’s where he goes next.

Wayne Lordan deservedly got the accolades for his ride on Lambourn in the Epsom Derby. It was a ride of metronomic efficiency, in a race in which there was a variance of less than one second in the times that he clocked for each of his last five furlongs. Ryan Moore’s ride on Sunday was similarly efficient on a horse who gallops.

A key part of it was the strong early pace, a pace that resulted in every horse in the race clocking their fastest furlong in either the second or third furlong, according to RaceIQ. Lambourn was only sixth fastest through the final three furlongs, but he had done the heavy lifting by then and, crucially, he was faster than runner-up Serious Contender through the final furlong having been 0.29ecs slower than his stable companion through the penultimate furlong. That’s his resolution for you right there, battling back, and that was the winning of the race.

Lambourn is Aidan O’Brien’s 17th Irish Derby winner, remarkably 10 more than his Ballydoyle predecessor Vincent O’Brien won, and he is the 20th horse to complete the Epsom Derby/Irish Derby double. That wasn’t a thing until 1907, well after the first running of the Irish Derby in 1866, until Orby won the Epsom Derby, the first Irish-trained horse to do so, and then came back to The Curragh and won the Irish Derby. That didn’t start the avalanche of dual Derby winners mind you. The second horse to complete the double was Santa Claus in 1964, 57 years later.

It is a thing of late though. Lambourn is the fifth dual Derby winner in the last 14 years, following in the footsteps of Auguste Rodin and Harzand and Camelot and his own sire Australia. His next move will be eagerly anticipated.

Much has been said and written about the programme at The Curragh on Irish Derby day, the Derby the shining light in a nine-race card that was – influenced by the World Pool and its appetite for big fields – made up of the feature race, two listed races and six handicaps.

The programme represented just one change for last year’s programme, the Group 2 Railway Stakes, moved to Irish Oaks weekend partly in order to move it further away from Royal Ascot, so that the Royal Ascot juveniles have the option of running in the race. Replaced by the two-mile handicap that brought the curtain down on proceedings.

It’s a very different programme to the programme that was in place on Irish Derby day in 1997, when Aidan O’Brien won his first Irish Derby with Desert King. King Of Kings won the Railway Stakes that day, a Group 3 race then, and he would go on to win the National Stakes back at The Curragh in September and to win the 2000 Guineas at Newmarket the following spring. Alhaarth won the Group 2 International Stakes, the Dewhurst winner from two years earlier, favourite for the 2000 Guineas the previous year when he finished fourth behind Mark Of Esteem, who would go on to win the Group 2 Prix Dollar at Longchamp the following October. Sagaro Stakes winner and high-class stayer and multiple Group race winner Orchestra Stall won the Group 3 Curragh Cup.

Times change, of course, and not many things are now as they were in 1997. And the advent of the World Pool is a significant relatively recent development in the world of racing, which represents a huge opportunity for Irish racing. But there is probably a happier medium.

The suggestion to move the Irish Oaks to Irish Derby weekend is a really interesting one. It wouldn't be easy, the European Pattern is a slow-turning boat, but if you could stage the two Classics on the same weekend, pepper the weekend with other Group races and listed races and two-year-old races and, yes, high-class handicaps, that is surely a race meeting to which people would want to go.

Fundamentally, it’s about attracting people to a top-class sporting event, to watch top-class sport. Come for top-class horse racing. Emphasis on the quality of the sport. Everything else is ancillary. It’s like that with sporting events throughout the country, throughout the world. You can watch any major sporting event on television, you can argue that you see more on television, and yet, the top sporting events are obviously sell-outs. Because they are be-there events.

The Dublin Racing Festival is a success because it is a be-there event. Take the top Irish National Hunt races of the early part of the year, stage them on one weekend, get the top National Hunt horses to be there, and people want to be there too. National Hunt racing is not constrained by the European Pattern like Flat racing is, and changing the position of the Irish Oaks on the calendar is not easily done, but even slow-turning boats can turn.

And, importantly, there was a good buzz around The Curragh on the day. The weather complied and there was a general sense of occasion. Also, nine races, nine different winning trainers, eight different winning riders. Ryan Moore was the only trainer or jockey to have two winners.

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There were noteworthy performances too from horses who could make their respective marks now at a higher level. Vespertilio was very good in winning the Listed Jebel Ali Racecourses & Stables Dash, coming from well back off a sedate pace under an excellent ride from Dylan Browne McMonagle to win by the bob of a head. Willie McCreery’s filly is already a Group race winner, she won the Group 2 Debutante Stakes as a juvenile, and it may be that she has found her metier again now as a sprinter.

Skukuza was impressive in winning the Listed Colm McLoughlin Celebration Stakes. Winner of a premier handicap over the same course and distance on Irish Guineas weekend when he was held up early on, it was interesting that he was sent to the front from flagfall by Ryan Moore this time, not by accident, on a weekend on which the prominent racers dominated, and he came home over two lengths clear of Alakazi. There was talk of Ed Dunlop’s horse going back handicapping now, but he is surely a Group-race horse in-waiting.

As is Keke. Eddie Lynam’s horse did really well to win the Dubai Duty Free Rockingham Handicap as impressively as he did, given that he raced in the small group that stayed in the centre of the track, and that he had to do a lot of running on his own out there. Again, the overhead shot revealed how much ground he had to make up at half-way, but Billy Lee never panicked, asked his horse for his effort when he needed to, and got home by a length from Red Evolution and The Highway Rat.

Eddie Lynam has won the Nunthorpe Stakes and the King’s Stand Stakes and the Flying Five and the Diamond Jubilee and the Al Quoz Sprint and the July Cup, but he had never won the Rockingham before. But he had won the Scurry, with Romantic Proposal, and she went on to win the Listed Dash a year later and to win the Group 1 Flying Five three months after that. Keke could make his mark now too at a higher level.

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