David Ord reflects on a landmark Group One winner for Aidan O’Brien at Royal Ascot on Wednesday.
Auguste Rodin’s victory in the Prince Of Wales’s Stakes was a 400th at Group One level for trainer Aidan O’Brien.
The master of Ballydoyle was presented with a rug with the number emblazened upon it to mark the occasion. As he held it up for the massed ranks of cameras, he had the chance to take a brief pause from his vocal media duties and momentarily reflect on the achievement.
I bet few of the other top-flight heroes and heroines he’s sent out through an era-defining career of unparalleled success have posed him quite as many questions as Auguste Rodin.
But this Wednesday, on a glorious sunny afternoon, he again had the answers. And before we do the usual deep dive into his tumultuous career, let’s first celebrate the achievements.
The son of Deep Impact is now a top-flight winner at two, three and four. He’s the first Derby winner to win a Group One the year after his Classic success since High Chaparral in 2002.
Keeping an Epsom hero going for another campaign has hardly proved to be a path laden with gold. Desert Crown, Adayar, Anthony Van Dyck, Masar, Camelot, Ruler Of The World and Workforce have all tried but failed to strike at the top level the following year.
Auguste Rodin has now won a Futurity, two Derbies, the Irish Champion, Breeders’ Cup Turf and Prince Of Wales’s Stakes.
He’s a horse for whom the first 100 yards are almost as important as the final 100. The blowouts, in the Guineas, King George and Sheema Classic, can’t be erased from his CV, but now they don’t feel career-defining.
And his trainer, as he did for City Of Troy’s 2000 misfire this time around, is taking the blame for those anyway.
“I promise, I feel the blips were my fault, the instructions were wrong and it took us time to start getting it right.
“He wants to go forward in his races. We saw today, when he gets to the front he waits, and then he goes again. He has the action, the movement, the pedigree, the temperament. He’s very special and Ryan gave him a very special ride. What can I say? He does it day in, day out.”
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Arguably more worrying had been his failure to lay a glove on White Birch in the Tattersalls Gold Cup on his final start before Ascot, the first time he’d seemed to run his race and be beaten.
Maybe the rain-softened ground did go against him, as did the fact he bumped into a thriving and much-improved rival.
But it made Wednesday a make or break day, no excuses were being offered beforehand, no doubts expressed by his team, and it was the moment half a furlong out, when the momentum French raider Zarakem had steadily built up and threatened to spring a 33/1 surprise, that we knew.
Because in the heat of battle, Auguste Rodin set himself and went again. The challenger was never going to get closer than the three-quarters-of-a-length that separated them at the line.
It was stirring stuff but not enough to shift the pecking order at Ballydoyle. You only get one shot to be top dog there and right now that’s a colt who is a year younger.
Auguste Rodin will go where they don’t go with City Of Troy. He has first pick. And that means the Breeders’ Cup Classic, for example, might be closed off to the 2023 Derby hero.
The day began with the new kids on the block, Wathnan Racing, taking the opening Queen Mary Stakes with Leovanni.
Their racing manager Richard Brown was asked whether she could take up broodmare duties for the team once her racing career is over. He said it was too early to say whether a breeding operation was on their roadmap. Those discussions have yet to take place.
Auguste Rodin races for the largest, most successful one on the planet. An operation who has made winning the Derby look routine, produced a handful of potential stallion prospects almost every season.
For nearly half-a-century they have blazed a trail, through the golden era with Robert Sangster and Vincent O’Brien, to the sons and daughters of Sadler’s Wells and Galileo who have dazzled on the worldwide stage for decades.
It’s carried O’Brien to a seemingly unfathomable landmark.
Auguste Rodin might not the be the best among them. But few have been talked and written about more, and there might be a chapter or two to come yet.
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