If they have this low grade infection then they clearly don’t seem to know which ones do have it if they are still running horses regardless – also, should he really be running his horses with this going on as surely there is a chance of this ‘infection’ infecting other horses the O’Brien runners come into close contact with at the races?
Re: Christmas Day, let face it but outside of the Derby win (run in conditions he clearly coped with better than anything else) he has always been exposed as merely a decent horse and nothing more. If he stays in training, I fully expect him to take up the pace making role that the 2025 Derby winner Lambourn has now been saddled with.
Coolmore have such a conveyor belt of very good to high class well bred horses (that would be a stable star in most other yards) that they can easily (and duly do) sacrifice many of them to a pacemaker role.
Constitution River was over hyped as the next big thing not only by Aidan but by a lot in the media, his French Derby and Eclipse wins (form wise) weren’t anything overly special at the time and have aged rather badly but then added to the fact that at both York and Leopardstown they got the tactics for him badly wrong (sitting handy off a strongish pace and thus making him a bit of a sitting duck for the closers to pick off – yes at York he pulled too hard early but he settled ok on Saturday but still got soften up by his own stable companions).
I would much prefer to see him dropped in in mid field or towards the back with no pace makers in the race wherever he goes next (likely Champion Stakes) but I rather suspect that won’t happen and as others have said, another defeat will likely be put down to Ascot soft ground…..although given the unusually warm weather, sods law is that we get one of those rare decent ground Champions Day and then they will need to find another excuse as he will likely get beat again there too.
It is rather a sad state of affairs to see very good Coolmore horses regularly discarded into the role bin of pacemaker for the benefit of the next Aidan anointed one and while to a much lesser extent Godolphin do it, Coolmore have turned the practice into somewhat of an art form and given that they can often go mobbed handed in some of the top races with this ploy I don’t think is good for the sport………as trying to explain to lesser informed fans or potential new fans coming into the sport that: ‘oh no you can’t back those two, three or even four horses in this race as they are not actually in it to win or even achieve their best position in the race’ is not likely to attract people long term.