If anything, the Epsom Derby picture looks decidedly more ambiguous than it did at the start of last week’s big trials season, which featured ‘informative’ races at Chester and Lingfield Park in England and Leopardstown in Ireland.
We are about three weeks away from the big race but have we made up our minds about which trainer will be leading his horse into the electrifying atmosphere of the winner’s enclosure at just after two minutes past 7pm (UAE time) on June 7?
I don’t think so, given the confusing information that we have culled together from races like the Chester Vase or Dee Stakes at Chester, the Derby Trial Stakes at Lingfield and the Derrinstown Stud Derby Trial Stakes at Lingfield.
Okay, so we saw the Aidan O’Brien-trained Orchestra hit a high note when denying Rosdhal by a nose in the Vase, and then on the next day another O’Brien trainee Kingfisher landed the Dee Stakes by a length from Bow Creek. We also watched in hope that some big piece of the jigsaw will fall into place when Lingfield staged its all-important Derby Trial, but did Sir Michael Stoute’s Snow Sky do enough to convince us when outrunning Hartnell and Godolphin-trained Sudden Wonder?
Perhaps not, even if Sir Michael, who has saddled the Epsom conqueror on five occasions in the past, thinks that Snow Sky has the credentials to run away with £751,407.50 (Dh4.65 million) winner’s purse.
The last of the week’s trials were even more muddling as the winner, Fascinating Rock, won the race in the Steward’s room after Ebanoran, first past the post by a neck, was relegated to second for hampering both Fascinating Rock and fancied Irish contender Geoffrey Chaucer.
Was there satisfactory pace in the race, or anything else to suggest that any one of these contenders was special? Another big no.
So where does that leave us? We all know, or do we, that O’Brien’s exciting colt Australia, who has had a vice-like grip on the Derby market for the last nine months (9 months!) since his victory in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf Trial Stakes at Leopardstown, has the pedigree to be a Derby winner.
We also know that O’Brien has a thing for the Epsom Classic having won the last two runnings of Britain’s richest horse race with Camelot and Ruler Of The World.
And then there is Saeed Bin Surour, Godolphin’s equally crafty handler who has plotted some of the shrewdest victories, like the one at Meydan in March when he outsmarted some of the world’s most astute handlers to triumph with African Story, a horse that was perceived to be a miler.
Bin Surour is banking on True Story to give him his first Derby since Lammtarra in 1996. It has been a long wait, but by his own admission, he has said that he has not had the right Derby horse all these years.
So is True Story the horse he has been waiting for? We’ll probably know on Thursday when the Epsom second favourite will hope to lay down his credentials in the Dante Stakes, the final trial for next month’s blue riband race.
Here’s an interesting stat to chew on — nine horses have won the Dante en route to winning the Derby, while in 2010, Workforce was the first horse to be beaten in the York showpiece but go on to triumph in the Derby.
