Aidan O’Brien was “devastated” Following the camera’s shutter that prevented one of the contenders of the upcoming Melbourne Cup Jan Brueghel, the trainer lashed out at the racemeet’s stewards as one horse tipped for next Tuesday’s race was withdrawn by the vets.
Aidan O’Brien is a man besotted by the Breeders’ Cup in North America, for if this weekend he wins two more races, he will become the most successful trainer in the entire history of the event together with its previous conquerors, but interaction with Australia seems to have come to an end.
The trainer aged 55 years, has for several years endured a hot and cold feud with the Victoria Racing controlling stewards. In 2008 he was kept at the airport and made to return to manage them after Septimus and two others from his barn had taken off and led the field before diminishing and the more sophisticated scanning that has more or less eliminated Jan Brueghel was introduced after his Derby champion Anthony Van Dyck passed on two years ago during the race.
But after Coolmore incurred about £130,000 expenses to fly the undefeated St Leger winner to the other side of the world, O’Brien departed off the Australian stewards’ you to rest the crooked horse which, according to him, to his own thinking, the colt would be bust somehow.
The stewards further added that the three-year-old was withdrawn by them on veterinary advice, and due to the current scans which states “the horse is currently at heightened risk of injury”, made it unsuitable for competition.
‘It was devastating news – it was unlucky for us, lucky for them’
From Del Mar, O’Brien replied: “In this region it’s the horsemen who make the choices, but in other regions the horses trot in front of a machine, the machine records the trot and the machine diagnoses whether the horse is sound or lame.”
“This has come as devastating news to us. For us it was unfortunate, for them it was fortunate. He was a Group One horse but in a handicap there were 8st 7lbs which moore rides and gets stronger every week.”
When he was asked whether this meant a final blow to his efforts aimed at winning the Melbourne Cup, he answered: “They made the decision and our veterinarians did not share the opinion that there was a shadow cutting from the front and another one from the back.
“Every three-year-old will have shadows and fissures, they will have this and that. It reaches a point whereby it becomes nonsensical, horse men and women are cut out of the equation.”
To some extent similar to the Grand National, the problem associated with the fame of the Melbourne Cup is that it is a keenly contested race, and the occurrences of six horse fatalities within a period of ten years, five of them being European trained, have resulted in tougher measures being implemented with regards to pre-race veterinary examinations, which now include nuclear scanning for foreign participants prior to their departure.
City of Troy warm but ready for ‘atrocious’ final tilt at Breeders’ Cup
City of Troy was the most enthusiastic of the Ballydoyle group’s members on their first morning on the track after doing their obligatory 48 hours in quarantine and although O’Brien was quite fond of him as he was facing the final and the biggest challenge of his career – the $7million Breeders’ Cup Classic – on Saturday.
He clarified that he was not ill-disposed towards sweating horses and that he was just trying to gain an advantage over the Derby winner prior to Saturday. On the context of the colt’s draw in bunk No 3, he further remarked that “in was better than out” but admitted it is more about what happens within the scope of the race.
“In our estimates, he is ready to make a step forward,” he said. “However, it is the matter of whether he can make a step forward from that position, in this kind of race? I would have to disagree. It is the most unpleasant oftentimes torturous race for a horse in the entire year.
‘We have got a three-year-old who will be running with older horses. He has quite an awful lot of things to deal with, if we are going to be honest with ourselves. We have trained the maximum we are capable of training. It is going to be something.’”
