Aidan O’Brien’s remorseless pursuit of Group One prizes takes him to Deauville on Sunday where Precise bids to scoop her trainer a 15th top-flight success of the season.
The Irish 1,000 Guineas and Coronation Stakes winner lines up in the €300,000 Prix Rothschild over a mile and renews battle with her older rival Blue Bolt.
The latter was two lengths too good for Precise in the Falmouth Stakes at Newmarket and both fillies are part of an eight-strong field due to go off at 3.40pm Irish-time in a race live on Sky.
O’Brien picked up two more Group Ones at Goodwood during the week through Scandinavia and Diamond Necklace.
RM Block
It puts the Irishman firmly on course to threaten his own world record tally of 28 Group/Grade One races in a single year set in 2017. That season saw O’Brien reach the start of August with a dozen top-class races under his belt.
One of those was Roly Poly in the Rothschild, which took place prior to Goodwood that year. O’Brien also won the race with Mother Earth in 2021.
Colin Keane travels to Normandy to again team up with Blue Bolt while another Irish jockey, Shane Foley, will be on board Evolutionist for Karl Burke.
O’Brien is again represented at Goodwood on Saturday where Amelia Earhart tries to regain winning ways in the Group Two Lillie Langtry Stakes.
The filly failed to fire in both the Epsom and Curragh Oaks and is upped in trip for this latest task. Up against her is Joseph O’Brien’s Melbourne Cup runner-up Goodie Two Shoes, although Consent and Santorini Star, first and second in a Group One at Longchamp on Arc day last year, are in the line-up too.
JP McManus’s silks will be seen too in the preceding Group Three at Goodwood with Oisín Murphy and Gavin Cromwell teaming up for In My Teens. She sluiced up in a Curragh handicap over Derby weekend and is raised 15lbs in ratings as a result.
The domestic weekend is dominated by the final two legs of Galway, although O’Brien should strike there too with Victory Speech easy to fancy in a four-runner juvenile maiden.
Saturday’s feature is the €110,000 Boylesports Handicap Hurdle and having proved his wellbeing by winning Monday evening’s big amateur contest, Comfort Zone looks reasonably weighted to follow up over jumps.
Harry Cobden broke his Galway duck during the week and teams up with Comfort Zone, who is having a first start over flights in over a year. Jack Kennedy rides Sir Galahad for Olly Murphy in the race and he looks the best of two cross-channel raiders.
Joseph O’Brien is also entitled to fancy his chances in the concluding mile-and-a-half handicap with Fratas. She found only Venusienne too good earlier this week over hurdles and considering she won five on the flat for Mick Mulvany in 2023, Fratas looks reasonably rated on a mark of 78.
Sunday’s feature is the €110,000 Ahonoora Handicap, where Tuesday’s big race winner Orandi goes for his own big festival double.
Orandi has a 7lb penalty for his Mile victory and will renew rivalry with plenty of horses that chased him home earlier in the week. The English raider Lir Speciale was one of them, finishing seventh, but he’s a first-reserve now and will need a defection to get in.
If he does, the drop back to seven furlongs could suit him better, as will softer ground, while a stall one draw is always a plus around this circuit. Lir Speciale’s trainer Brian Ellison won this race four years in a row between 2014-17.
Another English raider, Wahraan, was only just beaten in a flat handicap earlier in the week and looks nicely weighted on that evidence in the opening hurdle.
In other news, jockey Danny Mullins has until Tuesday to consider if he will appeal against penalties totalling €3,000 imposed after breaching parade ring rules prior to Thursday’s Galway Hurdle.
Mullins was found by the stewards to have instructed the groom leading his mount Tounsivator to not walk around the parade ring and instead turn the horse back and forth near the exit gate before the bell for jockeys to mount had been rung.
The stewards decided Mullins broke the rules “by his conduct in directing the groom to turn the horse back and forth across the grass when in close proximity to the crowd when it was already being quite fractious”. Tounsivator’s trainer, Willie Mullins, was fined €500. The horse ultimately finished 16th behind Putapoundinthejar.
