Kieran Clark reflects on day three at Royal Ascot as Aidan O'Brien hit the headlines after his 100th win at the meeting came in a barnstorming Gold Cup.
Aidan sole member of 100 club
A Gold Cup for the ages fought out between the returning 2025 winner Trawlerman and last year’s St Leger victor Scandinavia, who won by a head, the pair nine lengths clear, took Aidan O’Brien into rarified air at Royal Ascot on Thursday.
He became the first trainer in history to saddle 100 Royal Ascot winners, doing so in just shy of three decades, quite the achievement, already 18 winners and counting ahead of the great Sir Michael Stoute.
What is even more remarkable is the wide range of trips his blue-blooded string is able to perform so well at, this a 10th Gold Cup to sit alongside 12 Coventry’s, nine St James’s Palace’s and eight Queen’s Vase’s. There’s probably a partridge perched in a pear tree somewhere in Ballydoyle for good measure.
So, what of the greatest Royal Ascot performances from the stable?
Anyone have Duke of Marmalade top of the shop? Nope, me neither. You have to go back to 2008 for his rating of 132 in the Prince of Wales’s where he ran rings around a field that contained six individual pattern-race winners from that season alone.
O’Brien’s best miler at this meeting also came along in the same year, a St James’s Palace to remember as Henrythenavigator saw off subsequent Group 1 winners Raven’s Pass and Twice Over with a top-class display of 131.
Back to the stayers and Scandinavia put himself firmly into the picture as potentially one of the greatest at the long-distance format from this stable, his rating just shy of what the likes of four-timer winner Yeats (128) or dual-hero Kyprios (131) showed at their very best but he will no doubt be back for more in the years to come and his hat has been thrown firmly into the ring when it comes to that discussion.
Finally, we can’t discuss the achievement of Ballydoyle without mentioning the array of talent who’d ridden for the outfit.
Ryan Moore himself now just four shy of 100 successes at Royal Ascot following the Gold Cup, 54 of them for O’Brien, that more than double that of Johnny Murtagh (12), Mick Kinane (11), and Kieren Fallon (3) combined.
Royal Ascot Day Three
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