Coronation Cup

Ledger winner from two years ago in Jan Bruegel, who's still pretty lightly erased.

It's only, what, five starts back? where he beat the best horse in the world last year in Calandagan in the Coronation Cup, and he shaped better than the bare result in the Hardwick last time out.

So he might be the scumbag each-way play here, with Ronan Whelan getting the opportunity to partner him.

But is this just a matter of Scandinavia wins and wins well? George Gorman.

Al McCann comes out and finishes second in the Juddmont.

Bay City Roller wins the Coronation Cup.

Sadad wins a German Group 1.

And Mini Hawk places in the Prince of Wales stakes on her subsequent start.

Yes, it was an ideal prep, not a hard race at all.

Like, um, you know, respect, and I said it before, you know, respect to his, to his rivals in the race, especially Bay City Roller that is a Group 1 winner, a Coronation Cup winner.

You know, it was a piece of work in the afternoon for Darreej.

You can see Mickael Barzalona was very easy on him.

He's a good horse.

He's, he's a, he's a very good horse.

Um, when he won the Coronation Cup, it was on a ground that was very special, very deep, and so on.

On the Arc, he has a chance to find this, this ground.

Yeah, so tons to talk about this week with myself, Lee Motteshead, and my racing race colleague, Chris Cook, and we are going to start in Paris on Sunday.

Yesterday, we had the trials card for the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe, the Vermeer, the Niel, and the Foix, and it was in the latter race for older horses that we got to see last year's arc winner, Dariz, who faced three rivals, two of whom were really no-hopers, one of whom wasn't, Bay City Rollers, so Imperius on testing ground in the Coronation Cup, but Chris against Darius on a surface that was much quicker in the end than had been billed the day before the race took place.

Darius was far too good, cruising in behind Bay City Roller and then just swamping him for pace.

Yeah, very much as you would have expected, you know, had we all known the ground was going to be as quick as it was.

So we usually put him on a light antibiotic and would cure it up because he had went through a few layers of tissues nearly into the ligament he had to get a deep strong antibiotics and because of that we couldn't run him back we had to have two weeks after the last shot so he couldn't go back to Deauville so he recovered well he's a hardy horse he's in great shape physically he's done great and we think he's in a way better place than he has been so the plan is for him is to go to the Moulin and see what happens we're looking forward to him he's a big hardy customer he was unlucky to meet Boeco a few times and a few things didn't work for him on the day but he just got people Boeco's a very good horse and very well trained and ridden on the day so yeah that was it so it will be interesting

Big clash on Sunday at Longchamp in the Prix Foix between last year's art winner Darius and Coronation Cup winner of this year, Bay City Roller.

And I spoke to his trainer, George Scott, earlier on in the week about why they decided to go to France this weekend when they did have Kempton as an option.

We weighed up both options.

He's proven at the track.

And four weeks from the arc, we thought it was a better preparation.

And we haven't seen him since his big triumph on Derby Day in the Coronation Cup.

You mentioned the fact that we've had fast ground this summer.

And four weeks from the arc, we thought it was a better preparation.

And we haven't seen him since his big triumph on Derby Day in the Coronation Cup.

You mentioned the fact that we've had fast ground this summer.

Was it intentional then to give him that time off? Were you able to let him down?

Sometimes those very good horses who are beating them go on to dazzle and win the arc, such as Part Celeb.

But you know if you go into this race, you're likely going to meet a top opponent who isn't absolutely primed.

for the day because this isn't the day and even more so i think charlotte since they push the arc trials back a week they used to be three weeks out from the arc they're now four weeks out from the arc so you could argue that it was possible horses might be even less cherry ripe for this and they would have been in the past um base de rola is a horse who we know is magnificent on on as attritional ground as you can get that the conditions were appalling at Epsom on Derby Day when he won the Coronation Cup.

Now, they're not going to be like that on Sunday, but we also know that he has got form on better ground.

But also we'll be keeping an eye on the ground.

I don't think we want a repeat of the Coronation Cup.

So depending on what the ground's like.

if he comes to hand quickly and it's decent ground and francis happy with him he could go there but if the ground was to go and it became very testing um i'm not sure we'd do that to him because our because our main objective is a repeated trip to japan and we were quite lucky with the ground at the champion states last year so it worked out perfectly but we're conscious that that doesn't always happen at that meeting so we'll just have to play it by ear a bit as we as we go along

How bad it was, I don't know.

you know ground descriptions only go so far as well like when when it can rain on top of ground that's quite hard and not make much of a difference it probably did um affect ombudsman i'm not sure how much it affects them there was more there was a lot more to it than that um but but i suppose ultimately emma you know we're crying out for rain um really and uh it's funny that's after the you know the amazingly um alarmingly dry summer we've had um The Coronation Cup, particularly the Derby, were totally ruined by the grounds.

And it was a further kind of quandary in relation to York, but I'm not sure how bad it was either.

Yeah, it probably wasn't really as bad as some people made it out to be.