The confidence behind Dylan Thomas, the horse, going into yesterday’s Baileys Irish Champion Stakes was unmistakeable. Sent off as clear favourite, the Aidan O’Brien-trained colt was bidding to atone for a disappointment at York last month, when he could only finish fourth behind Notnowcato in the Juddmonte International. The money that saw his odds shorten to 13-8 suggested that he would. And, as is often the case in these instances, the money wasn’t wrong.
Dylan Thomas’s stable companion, Ace, took the five-runner field along in the early stages as you suspected he would.
He had made the running in the past, and Dylan Thomas had won the Irish Derby, so a fast pace was always going to play to his strengths. Mick Kinane, wearing the pink Ballydoyle away colours on Ace, set a decent pace all the way down the back straight. He was tracked at a distance of a couple of lengths by Kieren Fallon on Dylan Thomas, who was in turn followed by Ouija Board and Alexander Goldrun, with Mustameet wagging the tail.
The order remained largely unchanged all the way around the home turn.
Fallon moved Dylan Thomas up to Ace’s quarters and asked his mount to quicken. The response was almost instantaneous and Fallon suddenly found himself in front fully two furlongs from home as the field fanned out behind him. Jamie Spencer was getting a tune out of Ouija Board and she quickly moved upsides Dylan Thomas. A furlong and a half from home, and the mare was in front. A head up, now a neck up. Spencer picked up his stick and sought to cajole her all the way home.
Advertisement
But Kieren Fallon is not apt to panic. He was riding a horse who saw out a mile and a half, and he was sure to run all the way up the hill to the line. He didn’t resort to his whip until he had been passed, and when he did, Dylan Thomas picked up again. He fought back up on the rails to join Ouija Board again with 200 yards to run as the roar from the stand reached a crescendo. The mare, as gallant as they make them, simply had no response to this resurgence and just had to give best as Dylan Thomas powered his way all the way to the line to get home by a neck.
This race has a habit of extricating a response from the Leopardstown crowd that is usually reserved for when they race there over jumps.
Yesterday’s race lived up to the lofty standards that have been set for the Irish Champion Stakes, and probably surpassed them. There was no mistaking the Fallon factor. Irish racegoers’ empathy with the Clare man, at its zenith since the instigation of his UK ban, was very much in evidence at Leopardstown yesterday, all the way from the “Go on Kieren’s when he was legged up in the parade ring before the race, to the three cheers that rang out in the winner’s enclosure after it.
“During the race I thought we were going quick enough”, said the jockey afterwards. “But after the three-furlong marker, I didn’t think that we had. I wished that Ace had been able to take me further. But when Jamie went a half a length or a neck up on me, my fellow just put his head down. He loves a battle and he loves this fast ground. The feel he gave me when I won the Irish Derby on him was electric. He was a bit more workmanlike today. But he’s a tough horse to beat. He’s just getting better and better.”
Trainer Aidan O’Brien was quick to pay tribute to Fallon.
Advertisement
“I wasn’t really worried when Ouija Board went past,” he said. “With Kieren you’re never beaten, he doesn’t go for the stick until he really has to, and he hadn’t gone for it when the mare got to him. It is always a last resort for him. But the race went well. Ace didn’t mind bowling along, Mick was always going to make the pace. Where were we going to get two better horses or two better men?” O’Brien put Dylan Thomas’s disappointing run at York down to a combination of soft ground, a slow pace and the fact that he was a little too fresh going into the race.
“We kept him going for a bit after the Irish Derby so that he would be ready to go for the King George if Hurricane Run didn’t,” he said, “with the result that it just backed up on us a little bit. That race just took the freshness off him.”
Ouija Board’s reputation remains untarnished. She showed the speed to quicken to lead half way up the home straight, trading at almost 1-9 in running, but she was conceding 4lb to the winner and just couldn’t match his battling qualities up the final climb “She has run a great race,” said her trainer, Ed Dunlop. “And when she hit the front it looked like she was going to win, but she has just been out-battled.
We’ll take her home and see how she is before deciding where to go next.”
Jim Bolger was similarly philosophic about Alexander Goldrun’s performance: “It’s as good a race as she has ever run,” he said after the race. “I hoped, turning in, that she might go on, but the way it unfolded, we knew our fate quite early.”
Advertisement
Future plans for Dylan Thomas remain unconfirmed, but it is likely that he will take up his Breeders’ Cup engagement, with the Classic and the Turf both viable options.
“Hurricane Run might go to the Arc,” said O’Brien, “so it’s possible Dylan Thomas will go to America. It’s possible that we’ll train him for the Dirt there. He has won one of the most important 10-furlong races in Europe, so why not?” Wherever he goes next, his fame is sure to precede him.