O’Brien remains confident of Yeats’ class in top middle distance events
The eight-year-old made history at Royal Ascot last week when becoming the first horse to win the Gold Cup four times.
Such was the manner of his success that connections have spoken about possible tilts at the King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes and the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp later this year.
“Obviously it’s up to the boss (part-owner John Magnier) but all the options are open to him and I suppose the first one that would be open to him is the King George,” said O’Brien.
“Then there is the Irish Leger, the Arc, the Prix du Cadran and all those races so we’ll just have to see what happens. After this weekend we’ll probably all sit down and have a good chat about it.
“If you go back and look at the way he travels through his races and when Johnny (Murtagh) says go, you see the way he accelerates.
“He was a very impressive winner of a Coronation Cup and at this time of year when he’s up into full speed he’s a very, very classy horse.”
Asked whether he would like to see Yeats head back to Royal Ascot in 12 months time to bid for an unprecedented fifth Gold Cup, O’Brien was non-committal but he feels it may be better to call time on his racing career in order to preserve his legacy.
“It would be a real fairytale and a dream but I think maybe a time comes when enough is enough and you just have to be grateful for what you have,” O’Brien told At The Races.
“He is only flesh and blood and my biggest nightmare would be if we lost any of the genes that he is made of.
“If he was a half-bred horse you could store his sperm and it could be used later on but as he is a thoroughbred, that can’t happen.
“If anything happened to him I think it would be a great loss to the thoroughbred industry, as if there was a horse going to stud who was going to be breed real classy horses, it would be this fellow.
“At the end of the day it won’t be my decision, but I’m really looking forward to the time when his foals arrive.”
