Precise surges clear to win the Irish 1000 Guineas

Precise - will she stay the Oaks trip?

Horse Racing

Thu May 28, 2026 · 2h ago

John Ingles weighs up the speed - and stamina - in the pedigree of leading Oaks contender Precise.

Seeing that Precise is by Starspangledbanner might raise red flags straight away regarding her chances of staying a mile-and-a-half in the Oaks. After all, her sire will be best remembered for his high-class sprinting exploits for Aidan O’Brien in the summer of 2010. He showed blistering speed to win the Golden Jubilee Stakes at Royal Ascot followed by the July Cup. The drop back to five furlongs didn’t suit him quite so well as expected in the Nunthorpe, but he found only the 100/1 shot Sole Power too quick for him at York.

Starspangledbanner had already achieved plenty in Australia before arriving at Ballydoyle and had shown he was not simply a sprinter Down Under as he stretched out to a mile well enough to win the Caulfield Guineas.

Starspangledbanner wins at Royal Ascot in his golden summer in 2010

Starspangledbanner made a stuttering start to his stud career, so much so that he even went back into training for a while, but his early fertility problems are behind him now and Precise is one of his ten Group/Grade 1 winners worldwide. While none of those has won over a mile and a half, they do include State of Rest, whose wins included the Cox Plate, Prix Ganay and Prince of Wales’s Stakes, the Prix Jean Romanet winner Aristia and the American Oaks winner Rhea Moon, all of those successful at the top level at a mile and a quarter or thereabouts.

Looking at results in the UK and Ireland since the beginning of 2025, Starspangledbanner has had 4 winners (plus another who was demoted) from 58 runners over distances of 11.5 furlongs or more. The most recent of those came on Tuesday when Grey Fable won a mile and a half handicap at Dundalk.

While they may be few and far between, it’s not impossible then for Starspangledbanner to sire winners over longer distances – given the right help from his mares. One of that quartet of winners was Pharos Freedom, winner of a Tipperary maiden over 12.5f, who is out of a daughter of Galileo, and so too is Star of Jupiter – he was the one who was demoted after passing the post first in a two-mile handicap at Ffos Las.

The fact that Precise is also out of a daughter of Galileo therefore puts a much more positive spin on her chances of getting the Oaks trip. Her dam, Way To My Heart, raced in the colours of Anne-Marie O’Brien but was no more than a fair maiden, with her only placings from nine starts coming when second in a seven-furlong maiden at Dundalk at two and third in a nine-furlong handicap at Tipperary on her reappearance at three. While Way To My Heart struggled subsequently over longer trips, she may simply have gone the wrong way rather than failing to stay.

Kingfisher wins the Dee Stakes

What’s for certain is that stamina clearly wasn’t an issue for Way To My Heart’s brother Kingfisher. He won the Dee Stakes at Chester before taking his chance in the Derby as a 50/1-shot, finishing down the field in a renewal won by stablemate Australia. Kingfisher fared much better at the Curragh when runner-up to Australia whilst carrying out pace-making duties in the Irish Derby and fulfilled the same role for him later that season in the Juddmonte International and Irish Champion Stakes. However, running on his own merits and reinvented as a stayer at four, Kingfisher turned in a career-best effort in the Gold Cup where he finished runner-up to Trip To Paris.

Precise is therefore a product of extremes – by a high-class sprinter out of a sister to a Gold Cup runner-up. It’s obviously hard to be dogmatic about exactly how far she’ll stay – hard to be ‘precise’ in other words – but it was notable that she hit the line really strongly when winning the Irish 1000 Guineas last weekend, a race which O’Brien’s 2001 Oaks winner Imagine won beforehand.

If the stamina on Precise’s dam’s side does win out, Starspangledbanner wouldn’t be the first sprinter in recent times to sire an Oaks winner. Fellow Aussie Fastnet Rock was responsible for another of O’Brien’s Oaks winners Qualify (she too out of a Galileo mare) in 2015, while King’s Stand and Nunthorpe winner Pivotal sired the 2009 winner Sariska.

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