Epsom Derby: Aidan O’Brien could aim six horses at Classic
Trainer Aidan O'Brien could aim six horses at next month's Derby as he seeks to make history at Epsom with a 41st British Classic win.
Month: May 2022
The Derby: Aidan O’Brien could have SIX runners in the Epsom Classic
MARCUS TOWNEND AT BALLYDOYLE: The scratching of O'Brien's injured ante-post favourite Luxembourg has presented Moore with a tougher decision than he would have expected.
What Makes A Dream House a Dream Home? A Remi Mural
When Tom and Rhonda Carpenter decided that it was time to retire from their automobile dealership business in Ohio, it didn't take them long to decide where their retirement home would be. Saturday, Tom attended his 56th consecutive Kentucky Derby; it was Rhonda's 35th, and the longtime racing fans quickly settled on Lexington, Kentucky as their new destination. They set about meticulously restoring and furnishing a home with enough land to keep future horses on-site, and packed their bags for the Bluegrass. But when the refinished basement was made into a media room, there was a big, blank white wall that needed filling. And so it was that TDN cartoonist Remi Bellocq got started on his first-ever mural.
The Carpenters unveiled the mural to family and friends at their Kentucky Oaks party Friday night.
“As soon as when we bought this house, we were walking around and deciding, `Okay, what are we going to do down here?'” recalled Rhonda, as she sat in the basement for an interview where Bellocq was hard at work on the finishing touches of the mural a week before the unveiling. “Tom has a Derby glass collection. He collects halters,” she said, gesturing to a wall festooned with the halters of famous horses. “We have all sorts of art that will cover this whole house. We thought, “Wouldn't a mural be cool?” We had read an article about Remi, and Tom started Googling him.”
They met with Bellocq, presented him with the idea, and sold him on it, but not without a little trepidation on his part.
Bellocq has been doing cartoons for years, just like his famous father, Pierre “Peb” Bellocq. But while Peb has done several murals–at Aqueduct, Gallagher's Steakhouse, Belmont Park, Churchill Downs, and more–this would be Remi's first. And living up to his famous father's standards figured to be tough.
“As a kid I painted,” he said. “My dad would have us paint watercolors at the beach. We'd go to the Jersey Shore and he'd say, `Okay, paint what you see.' But I never took any classes or anything. He taught me how to mix colors and work with oils and acrylics. The funny thing is that when I was in school and I wanted to take an art class as an elective, he said, `Well…no. I don't know your teachers, but all you're going to do is learn bad habits. Just paint what's natural.'”
When he asked his father for advice on painting the mural, Peb told him, “Start on the left. Work your way to the right. Cover all the white space.”
“His humor is still intact at 95,” Remi observed.
It wasn't long before he developed an even deeper appreciation for the work his father had done.
The wall is five feet high by 11 feet wide, and is painted in acrylic paint.
“The difference between this and working smaller with watercolors and pen and ink is that it's a different medium,” he said, standing in front of the mural in his painting apron. “So you have to kind of work somewhat quickly. The paints dry out, and then if you've got a mix of a color that you're happy with, trying to get it exactly the same two days later when you're going back over it is hard. I realize now all the little tricks that my dad had. When he painted the murals at Churchill Downs and Belmont, he would go to the store and get all the egg cartons he could get, because then he could mix small amounts and then kind match it like that, as opposed to trying to do too much at once. And the funniest thing was that when I started it, I had no idea how far paint would go. So I started on the sky and I'm sitting there with my brush and painting and I'm going, like, `I'm such an idiot.' I mixed my own light blue, didn't have enough, and realized it would never match. So I ran to the True Value hardware store around the corner and bought enough to cover it. Then when I did the dirt track, I did the same thing.”
Tom and Rhonda Carpenter make a cameo in their mural | Sue Finley photo
“Derby Dreaming” is the name of the mural, showing a future horse owned by the Carpenters winning the Derby. The horse wears a saddle towel which reads `Meadow Wood Farm,' the name of the new property. When they get around to buying horses and choosing silks, Bellocq promised them he would repaint the colors on the jockey to match theirs. But for now, the colors he was allowed to use are those of the Bellocq family silks-purple and green-“which was a very nice gesture of the Carpenters,” he said. Like in his father's murals, look hard and you'll find people you know. Here, the Carpenters stand by the finish line (she's in a pink hat) cheering home their winner.
“We thought we wanted it to be joyful, at Churchill Downs, and just representing the joy of the day. Remi showed us a couple of sketch ideas, and this was the idea we just loved.”
Bellocq said that for people who have worked a long time in the industry, it can be easy to forget what it was like to be a super-fan looking to get involved. “We've been at it so long that sometimes you forget that there are people out there who just love to get horse halters, and stuff like that,” said Bellocq.
“All industries need new blood,” added Rhonda.
“We're putting up fencing and landscaping the front. Literally, we just moved in. Remi started on this when there was no carpet in the room and there was no paint on the walls. So the house has evolved in the time he's been here, and now we need to put up a barn, and the paddocks, and we hope to have mares and babies in the backyard.
“Moving to Lexington,” she said. “This is the retirement dream.”
And the mural is the icing on the cake.
The post What Makes A Dream House a Dream Home? A Remi Mural appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.
The Coming Of Age?
For Aidan O'Brien it had been a week of mostly ups, with one major down. On Friday morning, the winter favourite for the Derby, Luxembourg (Ire) (Camelot {GB}), was found to be lame behind after exercise, having been shortened in the betting for Epsom following his third-placed finish in the 2000 Guineas. By Sunday he had been ruled out of the Derby completely, just as another potential star emerged from the Ballydoyle battalions in the hugely impressive Stone Age (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}).
A maiden until the end of March on his 3-year-old debut, but with some pretty fancy juvenile placed form behind him, Stone Age performed the almost impossible task of lighting up a Leopardstown afternoon that was already blessed with spotless blue skies and blazing sunshine.
A week of domination of the English Classic trials at Chester and Lingfield gave way to a glorious afternoon on home turf, with O'Brien and Ryan Moore taking both the colts' and fillies' trials, the latter with History (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}).
Such a positive week in the build-up to the French and Irish Guineas, not to mention Epsom, had clearly provided the trainer with enough fortitude to withstand a Monday morning invasion of the Fourth Estate on his otherwise tranquil and immaculate training establishment deep in Tipperary.
The Derby media morning had been a regular fixture until disrupted by a pandemic. Though it is easy to imagine that O'Brien might prefer to undergo a session of root canal treatment to answering endless questions as to which of his potential Derby candidates is favoured in his eyes, he faces the pack of pressmen and women with his customary politeness and an easy humour which he doesn't often permit himself to show in the more serious arena of the racecourse.
Training at any level is of course a serious business, but each horse that passes by during the first few lots at Ballydoyle serves as a written reminder of just how much is at stake for this operation. The names and breeding of these bluebloods are printed on their saddle-cloths, providing a living, breathing roll call of racing's greats. The stallions' names are indicated solely by their initials and, for now, the one which appears most frequently is G. G for Galileo, G for great, G for gone.
As a breed-shaper he lives on, of course, in those crops of offspring still filtering through and, just as we have come to expect, in the current Classic countdown Galileo has been a dominant force. Last Wednesday at Chester, the so perfectly named Thoughts Of June (Ire) took his tally one past Danehill's record number of stakes winners. In the very next race, Changingoftheguard (Ire) lifted Galileo's tally to 350, and, with those floodgates open once more, on rushed Star Of India (Ire), United Nations (GB), History and Stone Age.
It won't last forever, of course, but O'Brien when questioned on his thoughts of what comes after his now finite supply of Galileo's stock muses simply, “It will be interesting anyway.”
Galileo may have been the headline act for so long, but he's not the only show in town. Ten years ago, O'Brien could have been forgiven if he'd wanted to come home and kick the stable cat after Camelot (GB) was so narrowly denied in his quest to become the first Triple Crown winner since another Ballydoyle resident of the previous century, the fabled Nijinsky. On the subject of Camelot's son Luxembourg now having his own Classic chances scuppered he demonstrates admirable equanimity.
“It's only stuff,” he says. “Stuff doesn't matter. Only a few things matter. I am disappointed for the lads. We've done our best, it happened, and yesterday morning the lads said he wants a month or six weeks in the box. It is only a waste of energy thinking about it. He is a very good horse. I don't think Ryan would have had a choice to make if he were fit.”
Moore has had his own personal anxiety to face over the last few weeks while his brother Josh has remained in intensive care following a fall at Haydock. O'Brien would doubtless agree that that's the stuff that does matter, but he would also have had no reason to doubt his stable jockey's focus through that time as, ever the professional, Moore has mined a rich seam of form on the track.
Two of the major rivals Moore used to face in the weighing-room are now keeping their father on his toes in the training ranks, and O'Brien senior was quick to point to the Ballysax S. one-two for Piz Badile (Ire) (Ulysses {Ire}) and Buckaroo (Ire) (Fastnet Rock {Aus}), trained by Donnacha and Joseph O'Brien respectively.
“I tell them everything but they don't tell me anything,” O'Brien said with a grin when asked what Donnacha thinks of the Derby chances of the Niarchos family's Piz Badile.
“Racing is so competitive all the way along. We always do our best to win no matter what, but I am always happy if they beat us,” he adds. “But believe me there's no inch given anywhere. That's our job.
“For us, even with our own lads it focuses your mind. We see how many times it's very competitive everywhere. We knew this would happen with our own lads coming on and everyone else. But you don't get complacent, believe me. You have to get beaten, you have to feel the hurt to experience the joy the next time. It has to hurt and it does. That is what drives you on.”
As if to underline his point, even while buried in a huddle amid questions left, right and centre, O'Brien's mind is never far removed from the horses being walked in hand just behind him as they warm down from their exercise. Without breaking stride in the interview, he says into his radio, linked to the earpieces on every rider, “We'll go for a pick with the lot when you're ready everyone. Thank you.”
In a heartbeat and with perfect synchronicity, every head is turned inwards to the large queen square, and seconds later those heads are down, quietly chomping at the grass. Six of their number may yet be Derby-bound, several more for the Oaks, but the hoopla of Epsom Downs on the first weekend of June could not be further removed from this bucolic scene.
Among the group of visitors to Ballydoyle is Andrew Cooper, the clerk of the course at Epsom since 1996, five years before O'Brien celebrated his first Derby victory with the horse who would go on to play such a dominant role in the great race through his offspring.
“It's hugely special,” says Cooper of the Coolmore and Ballydoyle participation at Epsom. “My tenure as clerk has covered the resurgence and pre-eminence of horses coming from here. I remember when Galileo hit the bullseye to become Sadler's Wells's first Derby winner in 2001, followed by High Chaparral.
“That support over this period and the focus from the whole operation here to win the Derby has been absolutely invaluable. Some might even say it rescued the Derby in a sense from that mid-90s period. It has certainly taken it to a different level of competition for others to aspire to.”
Whether the 2022 Derby goes to an O'Brien, or to one of their counterparts from elsewhere, there is little doubt that trying to solve the annual conundrum of the pecking order of the Ballydoyle colts has become an intriguing aspect of the Derby fabric.
On a sunny Sunday when Leopardstown racecourse was awash with families, did the children squashing their faces against the railings to get a better look at the action catch a fleeting glimpse of this year's winner? Those on that rail 21 years earlier had seen Galileo complete his own Classic trial with flying colours in the same race. Perhaps this is the coming of Age.
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