When the power brokers of Coolmore dispensed with Mick Kinane as their retained jockey, they doubtless believed it would speed him into retirement. Received wisdom was that the spark had gone, the sell-by date was looming. They surely never imagined he would come back to haunt them six years later, a fortnight short of his 50th birthday.
Kinane’s emotions are habitually a closed book and nobody heard a squeak of bitterness from him in 2003 when a summer of rumours about his position at Ballydoyle ended in what could be viewed as humiliation. Only now does he allow himself a mild observation. “I was disappointed by the way it ended. The relationship went a bit stale and so it was finished.”
So the satisfaction of winning a third Derby on Saturday could not have been more sumptuously embellished if he had ordered the ingredients himself. Ranged respectfully behind him and the majestic Sea The Stars were four blanketed finishers trained by Aidan O’Brien. He had outmanoeuvred his old team by keeping things simple.
That he was able to do so on the half-brother of Galileo, his 2001 Derby winner for O’Brien and Coolmore, was even sweeter. “I couldn’t believe my luck when he arrived,” the jockey said. “I wondered how he’d found himself here but it gave me a new lease of life.”
The beneficiary has been his employer, John Oxx, who has the good sense to get on with training his horses and leave the riding of them to one of the greatest of his time. Kinane revealed yesterday that they did not even discuss race tactics until two hours before the Derby and Oxx then just listened to what his jockey had in mind.
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“Clarity of thought is very important,” Kinane explained. “If you cloud the jockey’s mind with too many instructions, that’s wrong.” Unwittingly or not, he was drawing attention to a crucial contrast that may have had a profound effect on the outcome.
In the dank pre-race drizzle, O’Brien - looking oddly Victorian in top-hat and overcoat - gathered his six jockeys around him out on the Epsom track. For many minutes, he lectured and gesticulated, surely leaving none of his team in any doubt as to what was expected. And yet, not for the first time in a Derby, the tactics of the Coolmore juggernaut were exposed.
Golden Sword and Age Of Aquarius, both 25-1 shots and cast as front-runners, set such a modest pace that the suspect stamina of Sea The Stars was never fully tested. “I thought it would be a shade quicker,” Kinane said with a telling twitch of those bushy eyebrows. “My fella was finding it a bit slow.”
Kinane rode Sea The Stars more prominently than expected, advertising his confidence that he would see out the 12 furlongs, for all the misgivings of Oxx. “Every step of the way I was winning,” Kinane reflected. “But you’re just hoping the little man doesn’t put up that invisible brick wall at the furlong pole.”
Instead, handled with quiet authority, Sea The Stars won emphatically. His jockey can now look ahead with the mix of motivation and mellowness he has recently acquired through his relationship with Oxx. “Everything is open between us,” Kinane said. “I’m probably too quiet for him sometimes but it’s nice to work for someone who knows what he’s doing.”
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Kinane rode 58 group one winners in five years at Ballydoyle but perhaps none meant as much as this Derby. “With experience and age, you get to savour it more because you treat each one as if it’s your last. I’m running out of chances but I put no date on finishing. I’ll know when I’ve had enough.”