Centauri Rises For Harrington

[Wandering Eyes]

Manners maketh man, and all that, and there is nothing about conforming to the Royal Ascot dress code that automatically turns a man or woman into a lady or gentleman. If anything, in fact, its strictures tend to amplify the refinement, or otherwise, within.

If you want to know about real class, then, just take a look at the people who yesterday produced the scintillating Alpha Centauri (Ire) (Mastercraftsman {Ire}) to state what looks an unanswerable case as the outstanding 3-year-old filly in Europe.

Jessica Harrington’s response to widowhood has been to vest all the joie de vivre of her late husband Johnny–one of Nature’s gentlemen, if ever there was one–in the horses she has prepared to win so many championship jump races since his loss in 2014. With the help of her family, she has become an ever more dynamic force on the Flat, too, and now at last she also has a first Royal Ascot winner. Torcedor (Ire) (Fastnet Rock {Aus}) had run a mighty race when beaten only a length in the Gold Cup the previous day, while this filly had herself been beaten a neck on this card last year. But it turned out that Alpha Centauri was reserving her trainer’s breakthrough here for the very highest level, in the G1 Coronation S.

In the event, a six-length rout hardly proved a demanding examination of Colm O’Donoghue’s eligibility–after two decades as best supporting actor at Ballydoyle–to be cast in a lead role as Harrington’s stable jockey. But this gentleman has always had what it takes: balance, awareness, strength. The only missing ingredient, potentially, was the self-belief he revealed barely a year ago in renouncing the security of the only working environment he had known since leaving school. O’Donoghue was not going to die wondering.

As such, he can be absolutely indulged the uncharacteristic assertiveness of his celebration–first pointing an index finger to his lips, and then to his own chest. It was wonderful, in fact, to see him disclose the competitive edge that must somewhere drive even horsemen as innately humble as his longtime mentor at Ballydoyle, Aidan O’Brien.

O’Donoghue will need all that self-belief if this filly retains form and fitness for what already, given the way she broke the track record over a turning mile on fast ground, seems to be written in the stars: a crack at the Breeders’ Cup Mile. That race often turns into a crapshoot but this filly is built to look after herself against the colts; and class told, of course, in the two runnings won by her fabled third dam, Miesque (Nureyev).

If this was another breakout day for Mastercraftsman–Agrotera (Ire), under a classic Jamie Spencer ride, proved another sensational filly from the same crop when giving Ed Walker his own maiden Royal Ascot winner in the Sandringham H.–then proceedings had already added fresh lustre to Miesque’s family tree. For the fourth dam of Old Persian (GB) (Dubawi {Ire}), winner of the G2 King Edward VII S. for Charlie Appleby, is a full sister to Miesque.

Let’s make no bones about this. When Appleby, previously assistant to Mahmood Al Zarooni, was promoted to replace his disgraced boss five years ago, from the outside it looked a fairly cussed solution to the humiliation visited upon Godolphin by Mahmood Al Zarooni.

When the stable’s traditional antagonists at Coolmore hired O’Brien, for instance, he had already made a record-breaking start to his career, albeit taking on the likes of Harrington with jumpers. Appleby, in contrast, had spent 15 years working his way through the ranks at Godolphin: groom, travelling head lad, assistant trainer. The only obvious virtue of his appointment was that it enabled Sheikh Mohammed to stress that the steroids scandal was down to Al Zarooni’s individual culpability, and that the stable’s founding ethics–adventure, sportsmanship and youth–remained undiminished.

With hindsight, that was a big-hearted stand for “the Boss” to have made in such an excruciating moment of crisis. As such, then, you can only imagine how proud he must be of this transformative summer in Appleby’s career. Yes, the Sheikh has meanwhile also had the strategic sense to add a number of proven masters to Godolphin’s training roster. But Appleby himself has unmistakably come of age. To begin with, he appeared to depend for his confidence on the kind of strike-rate he could sustain by farming lesser races: maidens, handicaps, Meydan pots. Now, as a Derby-winning trainer, both Appleby and his horses seem entirely at home in advancing through the elite.

Already this week he had taken the 4-year-old Blue Point (Ire) (Shamardal) to a new peak in the G1 King’s Stand S., and now he has added the “Ascot Derby” to the Epsom original won by Masar (Ire) (New Approach {Ire}). What’s more, the way Old Persian is going, you could not rule out the possibility that he might add a second Classic to Appleby’s 2018 laurels in the St Leger.

True, the Miesque connection is all zip. But there is stamina loaded elsewhere in his pedigree: his dam, by Singspiel (Ire) (In The Wings {GB}), is a sister to a Group 2 winner at a mile and a half; and while we still wait for Dubawi to make a real impact in the Derby, the genes he offers include those of his dam’s grandsires, Dancing Brave and Shirley Heights (GB).

If this didn’t prove too punishing a test at the trip, it was nonetheless Old Persian’s first attempt beyond 10 furlongs and he took due opportunity to show the length of his stride and the size of his heart.

Appleby had been thwarted by just a neck with La Pelosa (Ire) (Dandy Man {Ire}) in the opener, the G3 Albany S., but can take heart from the reflection that precisely the same was true 12 months ago of Alpha Centauri.

The winner Main Edition (Ire) (Zoffany {Ire}) is a characteristic Mark Johnston find out of Tattersalls Book 1–where many lesser animals will assuredly have changed hands for a lot more than 62,000gns. Her jockey James Doyle confessed that he had followed the trail of the royal carriages in the procession half an hour previously, in which the Queen’s outfit had been identified by those who know these things as “summer grass green.”

How apt, for such a stunning afternoon–too warm, if anything, for the gentlemen in toppers and waistcoats. We had lost the breeze of the previous day, which though deliciously cool had also dried out the going. Doyle described conditions as “fast but beautiful.”

That, as it happens, was just the way the present monarch’s great-grandfather Edward VII liked some of the ladies he met here. His mother, Queen Victoria, felt there was no such thing as a “fast” lady; only fast women. But she might have made an exception for Alpha Centauri.

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