2000 Guineas 2010

I am currently siding with SNA to win and Fencing Master E/W.

Will be having a good study this week though, as there could be something further down the betting with the possible potential to make a top class 3yo.

Canford Cliffs’ sparkling workout lifts Richard Hannon’s Guineas hopes

• Canford Cliffs did ‘super bit of work’, says Richard Hannon Jr
• Hannon insists: ‘We were delighted. I’m not just saying that’

Chris Cook
The Guardian, Monday 26 April 2010

Canford Cliffs delighted his connections yesterday morning with his last serious piece of work before the 2,000 Guineas on Saturday, for which he is the 8-1 third-favourite. The colt will be seeking to redeem himself in the Newmarket Classic, having failed to win since his exhilarating success at Royal Ascot last June, but it appears that he is reaching peak form at just the right time.

"He did a super bit of work this morning," said Richard Hannon Jr, who assists his father, also Richard, at the Wiltshire yard where Canford Cliffs is trained. "We were delighted with him and I’m not just saying that. He worked a lot better than he did before the trial."

The trial in question was the Greenham Stakes at Newbury nine days ago when the three-year-old was beaten at odds-on by his stablemate, Dick Turpin, after making most of the running. Part of the point of yesterday’s work was to teach Canford Cliffs to adjust to a more restrained style of racing and Hannon Jr reported that the horse "settled well" when dropped in behind another.

"He’s turned himself on a lot since the trial, you can see it in the way he’s grabbing the bit," Hannon Jr said. He added that Canford Cliffs kept a straight line, in contrast to the Newbury run, when he hung markedly to his left inside the final furlong, having shown a tendency to hang in earlier races. "He’s always run straight as a gun barrel at home, so that’s a mystery to everyone, why he keeps doing that. But Richard Hughes [his jockey] is aware of it and if he hits the front in the Guineas and then hangs, we’ll just have to deal with it."

Hannon Jr said that Dick Turpin, a 16-1 shot who holds alternative entries in the French and Irish Guineas, was also likely to be left in Saturday’s race at today’s entry stage. "He’s working very well. We’ll have a final chat with the owners this week and see if he runs.

"I would think it’s fairly probable he’ll run if we get some rain. He goes on any ground – it was fast at Newbury – but he definitely goes on soft and that would slow some of the others down."

A soft surface, however, seems unlikely. The going at Newmarket was good, good to firm in places yesterday, with a dry forecast for the next three days. Course officials may irrigate the track today and again, if necessary, at the end of the week.

Side Nagy:
The way he’s been sitting in the betting is a bit like how ‘Binocular’ was priced up before Chelts…
The books are taking no chances – despite that the fact like ‘Bin’ he has failed to sparkle or show the type of form that was hoped for in his build up/prep runs.

Saint the Saviour

David Walsh, Chief Sports Writer
From The Sunday Times
April 25, 2010

Imagine you are a trainer of thoroughbreds, just turned 40 and you have won 160 Group One races, 39 of which were classics in England, Ireland and France. You have shaped the careers of many of the best racehorses of the past decade, you nurtured the champion Galileo, who is now the world’s most valuable stallion, and yet, as another season begins, you are perhaps more excited than you’ve ever been. Imagine this and you have a sense of what it is to be Aidan O’Brien.

Six days from now, flat racing has its first important moment with the Stan James 2000 Guineas at Newmarket, especially so as the race may answer the question of whether or not the O’Brien-trained St Nicholas Abbey is the sport’s next great champion. He won his three races as a two-year-old in bewitching style, and the spectacular last-to-first victory in the Racing Post Trophy at Doncaster suggested extraordinary talent.

O’Brien’s excitement is tempered by caution because great racehorses are like exotic flowers: touch them and the bloom is gone. As well, there is flat racing’s annual imperative of having just one year to deliver greatness. St Nicholas Abbey has to do it in 2010, his three-year-old year. Nothing else will do. It is like a football manager having a 16-year-old Lionel Messi or Wayne Rooney under his care and being given one year to achieve all that lies within the range of the freakishly talented.

“The last week or 10 days before a big race can be the most worrying,” says O’Brien, “because when you have horses at their fittest, that’s when they are most susceptible to something happening. We are lucky this horse is very natural, very straightforward, he wants to please.

“He was very mature at two and raced like he had an old head on young shoulders. Now you want to see if he has grown from child to teenager. We’re happy with all the signs so far.”

So far, so brilliant — but there is now an expectation of the extraordinary at Newmarket. How can that not become a burden for the trainer?

“I don’t feel that expectation, just the excitement of what can happen when we take off the gloves. It is up to us to get him there, to give him the opportunity to show us what he can do. We know he is alert, bright, mature, very quick, mentally sharp, fast reflexes and with him, we’ve never been bothered by whether the race is going to be run too fast or too slow. It doesn’t matter to him.”

A short-priced favourite to win 2000 Guineas and Epsom Derby, St Nicholas Abbey is already favourite to beat the older horses in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp six months from now.

MID-JANUARY 2009. “Sam,” one of the senior lads said, “you’re on the Leaping Water this morning.” Sam Curling had only been working two weeks at Ballydoyle when he was asked to ride the athletic-looking two-year-old known as “the Leaping Water”.

Until they are named in the spring, two-year-olds at Ballydoyle are known by the names of their mothers. Leaping Water, a mare once culled from Sheikh Mohammed’s stock and sold at auction for 3,200 guineas, was responsible for the horse that, four months later, would be named St Nicholas Abbey.

At Ballydoyle not much happens by accident. Riders are paired with horses but only after careful consideration of their respective personalities. O’Brien saw something in Curling. Son of Peter Curling, the Irish artist known for his racing paintings, Sam had ridden winners for Edward O’Grady, Willie Mullins and Nicky Henderson before accepting that his dream of being a top-class jump jockey would not be fulfilled. He returned from Lambourn and was at his parents’ Co Tipperary home when a friend suggested he ask O’Brien for a job. It wasn’t straightforward because Sam had to work on his parents’ farm in the afternoons and O’Brien didn’t normally agree to using part-timers at Ballydoyle. But, sometimes, you get a hunch and you make an exception.

Who knew on that morning, when Curling was first legged up on the Leaping Water, what the horse could be? Curling himself believes it was all an accident, that he had simply drawn the right ticket in a lottery.

On his first experience of the colt, he felt something you don’t often feel on a racehorse. “He wasn’t the most robust horse at the time and he wasn’t confident in himself but he was a lovely mover. He was light on his feet and gave you the sense that he was floating over the ground. Everything on the gallops came very easy to him. Other horses would get tired by the end of their work, not him.”

By the time he was named — after a magnificent 17th century house in Barbados — St Nicholas Abbey had convinced a number of people at Ballydoyle that he had uncommon potential. His looks, his athleticism and his natural class came in the genes passed on by his sire, Montjeu, a brilliant horse who, in 1999, won the Irish and French Derbies and the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe before being retired to Coolmore Stud in 2001.

Montjeu has gone on to become an even greater stallion and is perhaps the nearest challenger to Galileo’s position as the world’s best. Two sons of Montjeu, Motivator and Authorized, have won the Epsom Derby, another, Hurricane Run, has won the Irish Derby and the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, while another two, Frozen Fire and Fame and Glory, have won the Irish Derby.

Montjeu’s champions have mostly been middle-distance horses, perfectly suited to the classic Derby distance, 12 furlongs. None has been speedy enough to win the one-mile 2000 Guineas, though St Nicholas Abbey may change that. It is the range of possibilities that distinguish this son of Montjeu who may attempt to win the one-mile 2000 Guineas, the 12-furlong Epsom Derby and the one mile, six furlong St Leger. They call that the Triple Crown and it was last won by Nijinsky in 1970, in the first year of Aidan O’Brien’s life.

What Montjeu gives to his best offspring needs to be carefully nurtured because freakish talent doesn’t often come with normality. Motivator and Authorized were scintillating winners of the Epsom Derby but, by the end of their three-year-old careers, they had lost something: exotic fruits that bloomed in the summer wilted in the autumn.

When O’Brien realised St Nicholas Abbey could be special, one thought dominated: “How can we give this horse the best possible chance to have the career he is capable of?”

Having trained many sons of Montjeu, O’Brien felt he knew what St Nicholas Abbey needed. He watched the relationship develop between the horse and Curling, inset, and liked what he saw. “Sam is an excellent rider and an excellent horseman and he has great experience. He has nursed the horse and brought him along beautifully. He knows him better than anyone. When you get someone like Sam, you are lucky because he is a special fellow.”

O’Brien felt Curling fully understood how good the horse was and didn’t need to be reassured on the gallops. It is traditional in racing that for the important pre-race gallops the big-race jockey takes the place of the horse’s regular rider. Many trainers believe it is essential and simply wouldn’t consider using a jockey who hadn’t got to know their horse.

From the beginning, O’Brien believed St Nicholas Abbey would benefit from having just one rider at Ballydoyle, Curling. Though Johnny Murtagh has ridden the horse with great confidence in his three victories so far, they have been the only occasions when he has sat on the horse’s back. As a Formula One driver needs to find out how fast the car can go in practice, so it is with the jockey on the gallops. He wants to know how fast, he wants to push it, most of all he wants to reassure himself.

This isn’t Murtagh, it is every jockey. So O’Brien did something he had never done before: Curling has been St Nicholas Abbey’s only partner at Ballydoyle. He and the trainer understood the horse had to be protected from his own desire to always want to go faster. Restraining a horse without discouraging him is a delicate business: how to nurture the exotic fruit without exposing it to too much light? When he exercised, they positioned St Nicholas Abbey behind two lead horses rather than the customary one and that encouraged him to settle and move along at a slower pace. Towards the end of March, Curling felt the horse had become so relaxed he would be fine with just one lead horse. That was music to O’Brien’s ears, a small step forward on the road to Newmarket, Epsom, and all the other great tracks.

Sixteen months into his life at Ballydoyle, Curling says the trainer has made things easy for him. “He’s great at explaining what he wants and when you’re doing a piece of work, you know exactly what’s expected. If you do what you’re told, everything goes properly. With this horse, we know it’s there. We don’t need to see it and we don’t need to put him under pressure at home.”

Seventy-six horses have contributed to O’Brien’s 160 Group One winners and still there is a feeling at Ballydoyle that St Nicholas Abbey may be the most talented horse the trainer has worked with. “It’s probably too early to say that,” says Curling. “You have to have a lot of luck in this game.” To the suggestion that this may be the one with the greatest potential, O’Brien is circumspect.

“What I would say is that this horse has never, ever, disappointed us in any way. Whatever we’ve asked, his answer has delighted us. We’re happy with everything he’s done so far. Hopefully, we will get him to Newmarket in condition to show people what he’s got.”

He can always buy her back.

Is there any bookies doing special offers on the race? Like if SNA wins, they’ll refund losing bets?

Is there any bookies doing special offers on the race? Like if SNA wins, they’ll refund losing bets?

The market is anti post so I suggest you wait until Saturday am. Take a look at Paddypower then. Their current SNA special is 100/30 he wins both 2000g & Derby! – not with my money……..

Paddypower like coming up with strange bets. Guess they’ll quote odds without the favourite Sat am

Has anyone got the race times of EP in the Craven, Sea the Stars in the 2000g 2009?

Sea The Stars (2000G) 1min35.88
Delegator (Craven 09) 1min36.56
Elusive Pimpernel (Craven) 1min37.16

Elusive Pimpernels time is the worst of the batch

Who is this horse Makfi?