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It was his first serious race in only his second start and he was good enough to win a G2, so there could very well be a big leap going forward as 2yr olds just like kids learn at vastly different rates.
Comparing him to High Definition at this stage is daft – HD took all of the mile trip (on softer ground) on his only two starts at two to scramble home whereas Diego was able to win easily (despite being green as grass) over 7F on good ground.
As I said previously, beating Capulet may end up being a fair bit better form in the long run than we think now and clearly of the two, Capulet was the far more professional in all aspects and how many times have we seen sharp 2 yr olds be eclipsed by seemingly inferior contemporaries when it comes to their respective 3 yr old seasons.
The Futurity at Donny at the end on next month seems the obvious next step at this stage as I feel the Royal Lodge on Newmarket’s undulations may not be in his best interest right now, plus it is only a few weeks away on 30 September and may come too soon anyway after this run.
Of course all of the above could just as easily come back to bite me and no doubt some of you wiser gents on here will be rightly pointing out my folly if that does happen…..as they say (whoever they are) only time will tell.
It’s not that a Group 3 is beneath him, Zilzal; it’s just that a mile will be way too short for him next year.
I suspect it’ll be the Futurity this year, then one (or maybe two) Derby trials next spring.
“Heffernan only rode Capulet at about 60% in the final half furlong.”
I am sure Seamie would never do such a thing.
Agree LD. I thought he won well on Saturday.
It is a game of opinions but I think he will prove to be a great deal better than High Definition.
Jaw-dropping Racing TV update yesterday from AOB on the Spaniard and proposed run in the old Racing Post Trophy
“Yea, that was the plan, he’s a bit of a baby still, he’s plenty to learn and if he floated around and won by three or four lengths and didn’t learn anything it would be hard to stick him into a Group 1 next so Seamie went an even pace on him and tested him and he had to fight after him and run him down so we think he’d have learned a lot”
Anyone care to speculate on what the alternative plan might be. Newmarket? surely not put him away for next year? Any other?
So “Hasta la vista, Doubters!” will have to be put into Winter storage! I imagine O’Brien was otherwise very happy with yesterday’s Town Moor exercise given the ground conditions and the stalls fiasco. Diego remains a beautiful looking 2yo and appears a particularly placid and happy looking colt with a very switched off racing style. From the vantage of the bookies office he looked to me a little small in comparison with some of the other participants leaving me wondering if his development has stalled in recent months. Here is hoping for a winter spurt! Do the sectionals across yesterday’s card confirm my impression I got that while they were easily getting through the ground for most of the straight, they ran into something of a bog in the last few furlongs or was that just fatigue? You’d wonder about any horse that would act on that kind of terrain.
I was most impressed by his demeanour after the stalls incident where he must have caught more than a few stray hooves from his stable companion but didn’t seem to turn a hair after they were taken out the stalls, he was walking around like an old hack and reloaded into the stalls like he had been doing it for years.
Attritional ground like that (time was over 10 sec slow) was never going to suit his action so I am happy to just draw a line through that run – it will be interesting to see what the plans are for him. His RP page shows the only entry he has is for the Irish 2000g???
I think the Dante would be a much better starting point for him than a mile race and it is also hard to say how he would actually act around Epsom (the one thing you can count on is that the occassion will not be an issue) but maybe the French Derby/Irish Derby on more galloping courses would suit him better.
Of course it all depends on how all the O’Brien horses develop (or maybe don’t) from 2 to 3 and that might mean plans change.
The sectionals for the Futurity show an unusual pattern – every runner in the field ran the third last furlong (3f out to 2f out) faster than any of the runners ran any other furlong. So as we could see, a sharp increase in the pace at that point, which was probably overdone, as the final furlong times were generally slower than those for the opening 7F nursery.
Ancient Wisdom was the only runner of those that disputed the pace to run the last furlong in under 14s. The third, Gods Window was also under 14s, but coming from some way back.
I can’t see anything in the times for the other races to suggest that the ground in the final quarter mile was any better or worse than the rest of the straight course.
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