THE Curragh hosted an impromptu two-day fixture last weekend, the Saturday card rescheduled after an earlier abandonment, and the meeting was more about quality than quantity, 206 runners taking part across the 15 races.
Five of those were maidens, the first on Sunday another such race in all but name, while there were only two blacktype contests across the two days, but there is a fair chance we saw stakes performers in those maidens, notably the opening two races for juveniles on Sunday.
The market spoke in favour of the Aidan and Donnacha O’Brien runners, but it was Joseph O’Brien that won both contests, the winning trainer commenting afterwards “they have both been away once and today is just the second time they have been on grass. We don’t drill our two-year-olds and like them to progress.”
There is often an element of trainer-speak in these post-race interviews, and no one wants to be known as the handler whose horses don’t improve for their first start, but the visuals of these races back up his words; where the Ballydoyle runners were sharp and knew their role, the pair from Owning Hill were learning as they raced.
Bettered
Midnight Strike travelled well in the five-furlong race but not as strongly as the runner-up and was green when hitting the front before coming away sharply, his final three furlong split bettered only by the hardened sprint handicappers later on the card.
Cowardofthecounty, whose race was run in a good overall time when compared to the other six-furlong races on the card, seemed to find the early gallop a shock to the system but nothing picked up better as he pulled six and a half lengths clear of the third with the second, shaping as if even further would suit.
The featured Gladness Stakes was a weak running of the race, its status reduced from Group 3 to listed this year, and while Yosemite Valley delivered on the homework his trainer has mentioned previously, the form looks weak with Henry Adams running no race.
More relevant for later group races might be the Alleged Stakes. White Birch got his season started with a win, but he was beating two fillies off level weights, both Maxux and Village Voice having picked up penalties for late season Group 3 wins, with the former shaping well.
Room to improve
She came from further back than the two that she split, and was particularly strong at the line, well clear of the others soon afterwards, and might have more room to improve than either as she had no juvenile campaign and only started her career in mid-June last year.
Her stablemate Raise You also shaped with promise in fourth after a 587-day break, his rider’s move down the inner perhaps onto the worst of the ground and in any case meeting trouble, and he should improve for that run.
If there is to be a horse elsewhere across the weekend to progress into stakes races, it could be the mile handicap winner, Crystal Black.
This race was rescheduled from an earlier meeting and was stronger than the original race, Crystal Black doing well to beat three rivals who had already run this season.
He had missed the Lincolnshire with a setback so might improve more than normal for this and while he was well-positioned off a steady pace relative to some of his rivals, notably the runner-up Earls, he has a very likeable way of racing, his jockey able to ride him however he finds the race.
Best horse
His trainer Gerry Keane commented afterwards that he is ‘probably the best horse we’ve ever had’ and he is certainly getting there with a new mark of 98; Keane has only trained six horses rated 90 or higher in the last 20 years, the best of them Chappel Crescent and Laughifuwant, both rated 106 at their best.
The latter went agonisingly close to winning group and listed races (yes, I was on when he got beaten a short-head in the 2020 Concorde Stakes, but at least I’m over it) and Crystal Black may be heading that road, for all there are good handicaps for him to contest still.
IT takes no sage to predict that Willie Mullins will have a lot of winners at Punchestown and many stats to convey his dominance of the meeting will be referenced between now and next Saturday, the most striking one I’ve read lately coming from Paul Ferguson in his Punchestown trend guide, revealing the that last time Mullins had a blank day at the festival was Thursday, May 1st, 2014.
Since 2010, Mullins has won 89 of a possible 151 Grade 1s at the meeting but it is interesting to consider how the market profile of those horses has changed in recent years, those winners becoming much more predictable.
Ruby Walsh was the Closutton stable jockey for most of that period, and between 2010 and when he said goodbye with a wave on Kemboy in 2019, he rode 25 Grade 1 winners at the fixture, unable to ride in 2010 and 2018 with injury.
Mullins trained 34 Grade 1 winners in that time that were not ridden by Walsh, however, and while some of them came in races that he could not ride in and in years when he missed the meeting, there were 14 occasions when he rode in a Grade 1 at the meeting and got beaten by a stablemate, a few of them Gigginstown-owned and ridden by their retained riders.
But by and large, the Mullins Grade 1 winners in that time were more unpredictable, not only ridden by riders other than the main stable jockey, but often sent off a big prices.
Between 2010 and Kemboy winning in 2019, 20 of the 50 Mullins Grade 1 winners went off 5/1 or bigger, nine of those double figure prices.
Townend era
Things have changed utterly in the Paul Townend era, when finding the Mullins Grade 1 winners at Punchestown has become an exercise in the obvious.
Since Walsh retired, Townend has ridden 21 of the 30 Mullins-trained Grade 1 winners but six of those came in races where he couldn’t take the mount, whether it was a race confined to amateurs or a J.P. McManus runner where a retained jockey was used.
Post-Ruby, Townend has an 87.5% strikerate (21 from 24) of getting on the right horse when Mullins had a Grade 1 winner he could ride whereas Walsh was at 70.1% (25 from 39) in the 10 years previous, not bad by any means but still a reasonable gap.
Not only that, but all 21 of Townend’s Grade 1 winners since 2019 were sent off favourite in the betting, the biggest price any of the Mullins-trained Grade 1s winners in that time being 7/1.
For whatever reason, be it the yard becoming more dominant and/or getting better at sorting the pecking order, it has paid not to get too clever with their horses in Punchestown Grade 1s of late, and it is clear the task Jack Kennedy faces against Townend next week, not only competing with a rider of rare talent, but one that rarely picks wrong.