Inimitable duo chasing much needed Group One glory
The inimitable duo will be chasing much needed Group One glory on two fronts, with One Cool Cat and Silk And Scarlet.
Love One Cool Cat or hate him, he’s impossible to ignore, and we’ll all be glued to the Stanleybet Sprint Cup at Haydock on Saturday.
A couple of weeks back we wrote that if O’Brien could get One Cool Cat to land a Group One before the season ends then it would represent the greatest comeback since Lazarus.
You would have to say that the possibility of that happening is now much greater than when the works of 'wisdom' were penned.
Quite simply, One Cool Cat emerged from the Nunthorpe Stakes at York last month with reputation enhanced.
After having far from a clear passage for much of the five furlongs, he put his head down and ran on with real enthusiasm in the closing stages to finish a creditable third to Bahamian Pirate and The Tatling.
He steps up a furlong now, which should be all in his favour, and the expected soft ground again is no longer a major worry.
You’d imagine he has caused O’Brien more sleepless nights than any other horse who has passed through Ballydoyle in his time.
If One Cool Cat wins then maybe he will be tempted to do an Oliver Brady and break into an endless regaling of everybody in earshot. Two chances.
On Nunthorpe running, One Cool Cat is well capable of doing the business. I hope he does for all concerned, but will reluctantly resist the temptation to invest.
There will be no such reluctance regarding Silk And Scarlet in the Moyglare Stud Stakes at the Curragh on Sunday.
This is a good filly, with a delightful attitude, who stays and quickens. She’s given us two pay-days and we have to chance her again.
TRALEE has come and gone and, perhaps, it is fair to say it posed more questions than it answered.
You could probably describe the attendance for the four days as satisfactory and the betting as less so.
The dismal weather for much of the week was no help and there were times when Tralee Racecourse was a drab place to be.
Tralee has to help itself, of course, but a lift here and there from HRI wouldn’t go amiss either.
An old Irish saying claims that a good start is half the work. The meeting didn’t have a good start with six handicaps foisted upon the public on the Monday. What it meant was that you had just about everybody whingeing. And when two of those handicaps fell into the dreaded 33-60 variety on the flat then you really were on a slippery slope.
Was mildly surprised at the number of observers who were excited by the display of Cloone River on his debut over fences.
He was good and his jumping was tremendous, but will have to come through much stiffer tests than this moderate event before one should start getting carried away.
One trainer made me smile some time after he had saddled a winner. This particular individual bolted in, but the handler only seemed to get a limited amount of pleasure from it.
You see another of his had run a couple of days earlier, after hammering the Tralee success- story at home to the tune of 15 lengths.
The said trainer lumped on the beastie, but he finished a well beaten third. He hadn’t a bob on the Tralee horse.
