The Camelot Thread

[Guest]

BOC...

First things first: Camelot going for the St Leger would be a welcome diversion from the norm’ and a much-needed shot in the arm for a race dying on its feet. Still, call me a sceptic, but is all this Triple Crown stuff also handy for keeping out of Frankel’s way?
Parse down the post-Derby comments from Messrs Magnier and Smith and it would be easy to conclude that a couple of old codgers have gone all sentimental. And maybe they have. But it’s short odds about it being a novel experience for both of them.
One of the most famous observations made about Magnier over the years is that the softest thing about the Coolmore boss is his teeth. The bloodstock empire he has built up is a resolutely commercial enterprise where the bottom line counts.
It is true that no Coolmore owned horse has been in the situation Camelot is in now, with a Guineas and a Derby under his belt, so it is virgin territory for all concerned in terms of what to do about a possible Triple Crown bid.
The Sea The Stars team decided to go down the ten furlong route before aiming at the Arc and anyone still prepared to criticise them for doing so should remember that getting the better of Rip Van Winkle, Fame And Glory and Mastercrafsman can hardly be regarded as a cop-out.
There is also the consideration that the Leger is hardly an obvious trial for the Arc which remains the definitive test for any European middle-distance horse.
Plenty still believe winning the Leger cost Nijinsky the Arc. Shergar never ran again after it. Alleged managed to win two Arcs but got beaten in the Leger. By its nature, the world’s oldest classic is a tough ‘gimme.’
So is it offside to wonder that if Frankel wasn’t on the scene, and presumably on the verge of being stepped up to ten furlongs, would Camelot be going down a more predictable route?
The Triple Crown is a hell of an achievement, and by definition requires a special talent to pull it off. And the kudos for beating up on some more three year olds might even deflect attention away from not having taken on Frankel in what really would be a clash for the ages.
But that’s probably too unsentimental a tack to take

[Forced Kin]

So where does Camelot go now? (Where does the rhinoceros sit?) Wherever he wants.

Assume that the Triple Crown attempt is on. It’s a reasonable enough assumption. His connections seem to be, at worst, not averse to the idea and, at best, keen to give it a go. John Magnier said in the aftermath of Saturday’s Derby that, as they are getting older, they are growing to appreciate the value of these things, the value of achieving something that hasn’t been achieved in over four decades.

Stallion potential is rarely far from the Coolmore supremo’s thoughts, and the St Leger hasn’t been a stallion-making race since commercial breeders decided that speed and precocity was the new black, so you would have understood it if he had been lukewarm on the idea. However, if you have a St Leger winner who has also won the Guineas and the Derby, a St Leger winner who is the only horse in the last 42 years to emulate Nijinsky, with all the resonance between the son of Northern Dancer and the bloodstock world, how exciting a stallion prospect would you have on your hands?

So, running with the Triple Crown assumption, the St Leger is at Doncaster on September 15. What do you do between now and then? One option is to leave him off until then. Give Camelot a break now, he has been in training since before the Guineas, he may not have had his screws fully tightened for the Guineas, Aidan O’Brien may have twisted them just tightly enough to – genius that he is – get him home by a neck, but if you win a Guineas, you can’t be too far off fully fit. And you can be sure that he was as tight as O’Brien dared to have him for Saturday’s Derby.

It looked effortless enough on Saturday, it looked like he may have won with plenty in hand and without getting near the red zone, but looks can often be deceptive in these instances, and you can be sure that he has had a hard race.

Sure, you could run him in the Irish Derby or the Eclipse and/or the King George and/or the Juddmonte International, and kick on, and he could be that exceptional type of horse, Sea The Stars-esque, who can win a Group 1 race every month during the summer. However, you have to think that, if your primary goal is to win the Leger, bridge the gap through 40 years of racing history to Nijinsky, then surely your chance of so doing is maximised by leaving him off during the summer and having Aidan O’Brien train him to peak again for September 15?

Of course, there is an opportunity cost of taking a break now, but it is not as though Team Ballydoyle don’t have a plethora of other potent options for all the races that Camelot would miss. Irish Derby: Astrology, Imperial Monarch and a few others. Eclipse: So You Think. King George: St Nicholas Abbey. Juddmonte International: almost all of the above, but probably not So You Think, who is reportedly Australia-bound after the Eclipse.

Say you did give Camelot a break now, train him for the St Leger, and everything was to go to plan, that he got there in rude health and won the race doing handsprings, then you could run him in the Arc. Leger winners have an awful record in the Arc, but it might be different this year. Apart from the fact that Camelot would be an exceptional St Leger winner, crucially, if he was given a break now he would also have arrived into the race a fresher horse than most St Leger winners, and the three weeks and a day between the St Leger and the Arc could be enough for a fresh horse to fully recover.

After the Arc? Who knows. You could retire, you could run in the Breeders’ Cup Turf, or you could go away for the winter and come back again next year as a four-year-old. Although maybe that’s just hoping for too much.

[Yeehaa]

Nick Mordin

CAMELOT AN ABOVE AVERAGE DERBY WINNER

A lot of recent Derby winners have not been that smart. Nine of the last eighteen never won another Group race after their success at Epsom. However I don't think that is going to be the case with CAMELOT (43). He's a couple of lengths a mile better than the average Derby winner according to my ratings.

It was impressive how Camelot came from well off the strong pace set by stablemate Astrology to pick off the leaders quickly despite hanging, take the lead a furlong out and then surge five lengths by the time he reached the line.

With his sire Montjeu dying recently there is clearly a lot of pressure on Coolmore to find a replacement before the next breeding season. Camelot would be ideal as he's already won a big 2YO race and two Classics. The trick will be to use the next four months to build Camelot's reputation to a high enough level. That means hopefully keeping him unbeaten.

In a normal season this would not be a big problem. Camelot is almost certainly capable of beating any three year old over ten furlongs or more. In addition the weight for age allowance would usually give him a big edge over older horses in all-age races like the Arc.

The trouble is that this year, smart as he is, Camelot is up against a freakishly strong group of older horses that any three year old of the last quarter century would have trouble beating.

Foremost amongst these is of course the mighty Frankel. I can't imagine Camelot being able to beat Cecil's star and he surely won't be asked to face him.

Another older horse that Camelot ought to sidestep in my opinion is last season's highest rated middle distance performer Cirrus Des Aigles. The French horse looks likely to win a whole bunch of the top WFA races. His tenacity and turn of foot could easily make Camelot look bad.

Finally I would be wary of tackling the Arc with Camelot. Aidan O'Brien's Classic colts are invariably over the top by the time that race is run. Proof of this is that he's had 33 three year old runners in British, French and Irish Group 1's in October or later over the last sixteen years and they've all lost. The only two to reach the first three were Eagle Mountain who was rested for ten weeks before running second in the Champion Stakes and High Chaparral who was off to three months before running third in the Arc.

In the circumstances there's an awful lot to like about the plan mooted by Camelot's connections of shooting for the St Leger. This would avoid the problems presented by the older generation while at the same time giving him a huge chance of becoming the first Triple Crown winner in over fourty years. If he did that it would probably earn bigger headlines than anything Frankel, Cirrus des Aigles or any other horse does this season.

[Sprinter]

More from Yeehaa's original commentator

Praise and criticism tends to go in waves. In the immediate aftermath of Camelot’s Derby success, he was hailed a true champion. Then came a reaction, suggesting he’s the best of a mediocre classic crop. That could yet prove valid, but never forget first impressions can deceive.

Rare is the year when the Epsom Derby form isn’t written off as sub-par. There are exceptions that are immediately obvious, such as Sea The Stars, but it’s important to remember that Epsom is really the first solid piece of middle-distance evidence in the season, the first piece of the jigsaw if you like.

It was the same a dozen years ago when Sinndar scored a memorable Derby success. What did he beat was the chorus? Time showed quite a lot actually.

Runner-up Sakhee turned into an outstanding four year old, brilliant in the Juddmonte and even more brilliant in the Arc. Only Tiznow’s nostril hair prevented him pulling off an impossible ask in the Breeders Cup Classic.

The third Beat Hollow didn’t do too badly either, winning the Grand Prix de Paris on his next start and going on to be the outstanding turf horse in the USA. Even the fourth home Best Of The Bests graduated to Group 1 company, landing the Prix d’Ispahan.

Ultimately Derby 2000 was rated an outstanding renewal but there was barely an inkling of that at the time.

No one can say Main Sequence, Astrology & Co are in anything like the same league, but no one can say for certain either that they won’t prove to be very high class animals.

The fascination of the flat game is in the finding out.

[Yeehaa]

Brian is like a dog with a bone on this one

The more you examine Camelot’s reputation, the easier it is to argue he is the best of a particularly bad lot of three year olds, and that, rather like a carefully cultivated boxer, his success is a tribute to some extremely good management.

That isn’t to dispute that Aidan O’Brien’s Triple Crown contender can only beat what is put in front of him. Clearly that is the case. It’s just that what has been put in front of him up to now would mostly have been hard-pushed to even land a punch in a good classic crop.

In his five races to date, Camelot has defeated just two Group 1 winners. French Fifteen, runner up at Newmarket, won his top-flight race as a two year old and has been stuffed twice since the Guineas in the Jockey Club and the Jean Prat.

Camelot’s stable companion Power won the National Stakes at two and the Irish Guineas in May. Just one run since resulted in him finishing well down the field in the St James’s Palace.

At Epsom, Camelot beat Main Sequence and Astrology in a race where his big danger was supposed to be Bonfire, a horse that has since been gelded. And beating Born To Sea at the Curragh is so far nothing out of the ordinary. Famous Name did the same earlier in the month, and by further.

Maybe a filly like Great Heavens can put it up to the Ballydoyle star in the Leger but the more one thinks about it, this whole Triple Crown stuff has served a purpose in allowing Camelot steer well clear of Frankel without connections having to put up with a lot of flak for dodging the great horse.

That might not be very sporting, and there will be plenty who argue that pitching Camelot in against Frankel at York would have been a futile act anyway. But it will make some of the ‘morkoting’ material put about by Coolmore’s PR department when the time comes to flog the colt as a stallion just a little hard to swallow.

Then again, if Camelot and Frankel both end up in the Arc, everything will be settled. But when it comes to the millions involved at this level of the bloodstock game, such sentiment rarely wins out.

[Yeehaa]

He is mellowing ....


The highlight this weekend will be Camelot’s Triple Crown attempt in the Leger at Doncaster.

It’s hard not to conclude the only realistic threat to Aidan O’Brien’s unbeaten star is the trip because everything else in the race looks hopelessly out-classed.

But you never know*what can happen up that long Doncaster straight at the end of an extended mile and three quarters.

Shergar got stuffed into fourth when he was miles clear of everything else in terms of pure class, just like Camelot is. Alleged managed to get beaten for the only time in his career in the Leger, not so much due to the distance but rather a Lester Piggott ride that had Vincent O’Brien reaching for some rather industrial language to describe it.

At long odds-on, only the very rich or the very silly will bet on Camelot. But if he pulls it off, it will be a helluva feat, whatever about the quality of opposition.

[Yeehaa]

While Andy Murray ended a tennis drought stretching back to 1936 on Tuesday, it is 42 years since Vincent O'Brien's Nijinsky, trained at the same Co Tipperary stable as Camelot, became racing's 15th Triple Crown hero.

Almost every step of the career of Aidan O'Brien-trained Camelot seems to have been carrying him to an attempt to follow in his hoofprints.

John Magnier and his fellow owners, Derrick Smith and Michael Tabor, talked about the possibility at Christmas, over four months before this son of Montjeu achieved the first, and what many think will be his toughest leg, by landing the 2,000 Guineas over a mile at Newmarket.

No offspring of his sire, an influence for stamina, had won a Group One over a mile until teenage jockey Joseph O'Brien conjured a withering run from his mount to pip French Fifteen a neck. When Camelot beat Main Sequence, one of his rivals this afternoon, by five lengths in the Derby in June, the Triple Crown bid was confirmed.

At one time the Coolmore axis would have run a mile (and three-quarters) from Saturday's race. They make stallions and a Leger winner was poor business with breeders hooked on speed.

But Camelot, who has looked head and shoulders above his peers this summer, has offered a chance to immortalise all those involved in him and that has more value than mere pounds or euros.

This week Aidan O'Brien spoke of a gallop before last year's Racing Post Trophy at Doncaster when Camelot beat UAE Derby winner Daddy Long Legs by a staggering 25 lengths. He kept quiet for fear of risking ridicule.

O'Brien said: 'He has always done things of another standard, different to other horses. After his races he just stands there and doesn't blow. He must have tremendous lung and heart capacity.'

That will be tested today, brilliant as he is, facing an extra two and a half furlongs, and testing his stamina will be the task of his eight rivals, particularly Dartford, the pacemaker run by John Gosden.

The four-time Leger winner, including the last two, has a strong team again with Great Voltigeur winner Thought Worthy, choice of stable jockey William Buick, and Michelangelo, bidding to give Frankie Dettori his sixth Leger.

Guarantee and Sir Henry Cecil's Thomas Chippendale have place claims, but all could end up chasing a shadow.

Both Smith and Tabor are former bookmakers, they like a bet and they've only taken this gamble with Camelot because the odds are in their favour.

Some argue the Triple Crown is an outdated irrelevance but if Camelot can make history, he will be far better remembered in 50 years than next month's Arc hero, unless that's also him.

[flatman]

Was he robbed of triple crown ?