Aidan O’Brien spearheaded a dream start to the 41st Breeders’ Cup when Lake Victoria overcame an awful journey and proved herself a class apart from her rivals to win the Juvenile Fillies Turf by a length and a half under Ryan Moore.
Pushed along to get up with the pace from her inside draw, Lake Victoria was badly hampered on the first bend and it took an age for Moore to find a rhythm with her but, already a Group One winner over six furlongs and seven, she was always going to have the gears to retrieve it in the straight providing she stayed and stay she did to give Irish trained horses a double on the day.
“Ryan was very comfortable on her down the back straight although he was further back than he wanted to be after she got bumped on the first bend,” said O’Brien. “For a filly to win three Group Ones, it’s very special.”
Moore added: “All she needed was normal racing luck and we just about managed that. I didn’t have any concerns about her handling the turns, distance or track, to me no doubt suited to a mile her. Just needed a run, she got that and she was too good.”
Earlier there was an Irish one-two in the Juvenile Turf Sprint and if there was a surprise about it it was that it did not involve O’Brien as the Ger Lyons trained Magnum Force, given a sublime ride by Colin Keane, played patience behind a brutal pace and slipped up the rail to pass eight in the short straight and then hold on from the Adrian Murray’s fast-finishing Arizona Blaze.
“They went real quick and I accepted it,” explained Keane who is now two wins from four rides in Breeders’ Cups and is crowned champion jockey in Ireland for the sixth time at The Curragh on Sunday.
“It was also very rough up front for a furlong and a half. The pace collapsed turning in, the horse on the outside was falling away so I went down the inside. We thought we’d see a better horse on the quicker ground and round a bend and thankfully we did.”
Lyons puts up a photograph of every winner he has each season in his office and then clears them out at the end of the year and starts with a blank wall again. That may be a motivational tool but Magnum Force might have booked a permanent spot on the wall.
“When he went past the line at Doncaster (in third – Big Mojo, fourth here, was in second) I thought the first three are going to be banging heads together for the next 18 months, I know the second is going to the Breeders’ Cup, I’ll be sick if I don’t go.
“Colin is humble and unassuming, he’s won two Breeders’ Cups and still no-one knows about him. With the right ammo he delivers on the big stage. I haven’t got the horses but I need the world to wake up to him.”
