“I was confident that I’d pass five of them,” Ryan Moore said after winning the Irish Champion Stakes on The Grey Gatsby here on Saturday. “I just wasn’t quite so confident about the sixth.”
The sixth horse was Australia, the Derby winner and a horse that had beaten The Grey Gatsby in the International Stakes at York last time out. Moore, though, is a jockey who rarely gets it wrong and he had judged his ride on The Grey Gatsby to perfection. Having stalked the field behind a very strong pace, he was still last turning for home but arrived to challenge Australia for the lead with a few strides to run before edging ahead in the last of them.
For Moore, it was just another outstanding ride to add to dozens in major races in recent years. For Kevin Ryan, The Grey Gatsby’s trainer, however, it was a breakthrough moment, confirming the merit of The Grey Gatsby’s win in the French Derby earlier this year, and also Ryan’s ability to compete on the sport’s biggest days.
“He’s a great horse and it was a fantastic ride,” Ryan said. “Now the horse will get the credit that he deserves. He hasn’t had it yet.
“Hughsie [Richard Hughes] said after York that Australia got first kick on him. He felt he could have been an awful lot closer and today we probably had him in a little bit better shape than York.”
The Grey Gatsby will not run in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe but will stay in training as a four-year-old and may make his final start as a three-year-old in the Qipco Champion Stakes at Ascot on Champions Day next month.
Australia, trained by Aidan O’Brien and ridden by his son Joseph, drifted for the Arc after his second defeat of the season, and is out to 8-1 (from 6-1) with William Hill.
Earlier on the first card of Champions Weekend, O’Brien’s John F Kennedy, a son of Galileo out of the dual Group One winner Rumplestiltskin, powered clear of his field in the Group Three John Deere Juvenile Turf Stakes to establish himself as the clear early favourite for next year’s Derby.
Australia beat Free Eagle, also an impressive winner on Saturday’s card, in the same race last season, and John F Kennedy is now top-priced at 8-1 for the Epsom Classic ahead of a possible final start of his two-year-old season in the Dewhurst Stakes at Newmarket next month.
Free Eagle, meanwhile, could not have made a more impressive return to the track on his first start for 12 months. Backed to started odds-on at 9-10 despite his long absence, Free Eagle surged seven lengths clear in the Group Three Enterprise Stakes and is now one of the favourites for next month’s QIPCO Champion Stakes at Ascot, Britain’s richest race.