Aidan O’Brien doubles up in Guineas then confirms Japan’s Derby route

The Derby is in Aidan O’Brien’s sights following the trainer’s fourth clean sweep of the Guineas here but he warned that Japan, widely seen as his best chance in the Epsom race, will need his reappearance run at Chester this week. The colt is likely to start favourite for the Vase on Wednesday, a race which O’Brien seems to regard as the ideal prep-race for Epsom next month.

“He’s good but he’s going to improve a lot from his trial,” O’Brien said. “Whatever he’ll do, if he does go to the Derby, he will step up from it, I would imagine.

“He’ll go to Chester, just ready to start. But if he’s going to the Derby, he has to start.”

Japan, last seen winning the Beresford Stakes at Naas in September, is 7-1 second-favourite for the Derby, behind Too Darn Hot. O’Brien gave an outline of his plans for other Derby trials in the next fortnight, saying he might also send Norway, Mohawk and Circus Maximus to Chester this week, while Broome would stay in Ireland for Sunday’s Derrinstown Derby Trial at Leopardstown.

“The Dante is a bit too close to the Derby for us,” O’Brien added in reference to next week’s big race at York. “So that’s why we try to get out earlier.”

O’Brien was speaking in the winner’s enclosure after his Hermosa landed the 1,000 Guineas, a day after the trainer won the 2,000 with Magna Grecia. The Irishman has now won 14 of the last 27 British Classics and the last three in a row.

Yet, as on Saturday, punters were wrong-footed on Sunday and backed the wrong one from the Ballydoyle stable. The presence of Ryan Moore aboard Just Wonderful suggested she was the stable’s first string and she went off at 13-2, while Fairyland and Frankie Dettori were 15-2. Hermosa, meanwhile, was allowed to go off at 14-1 under Wayne Lordan and, when she went straight to the front, many onlookers doubtless imagined she was pacemaking for her stablemates.

Inside the final furlong she was collared by rivals on both sides and her race seemed to be run. Mere strides later Hermosa emerged once more from the pack like a cork from a champagne bottle, rallying gamely to score by a length.

She was the only runner in the field to have been sired by the exceptional stallion Galileo, one of those facts that seem terribly significant in hindsight, and O’Brien did not miss this latest opportunity to praise the daddy of them all. “Galileo’s influence is going to be there forever and ever,” he said.

Of Galileo’s offspring, he added: “It’s their will to win that makes them so different. There doesn’t seem to be any bottom to them; they are so genuine. When push comes to shove, their head goes down. They would get down on their knees for you if they had to. Whatever is in them, they will not give up.”

Uncomplicated and tough, in her trainer’s words, Hermosa is now likely to be aimed at the Oaks, for which she is second-favourite at 7-1, with the extra half-mile nearly certain to suit. “I’d say that’s what she’s gonna love,” O’Brien said.

While he was his usual affable but humble self, connections of the runner-up showed much less self-control. “I’m now going to start jumping up and down,” said Sheila Lavery, trainer of Lady Kaya, her first runner in a Classic. “Racing at this level, what do I know? But I’ve got lots of people who help. I’m just ecstatic.”

The hot favourite, Qabala, lost her unbeaten record but ran well in third, her trainer, Roger Varian, bemoaning some trouble in running at the two-furlong pole. “I’m not going to say she would have won, because it was too far out and it is a too grey an area,” Varian said.

“But the jockey thought it cost him about a length, because he couldn’t hold his pitch and he has had to come out around Fairyland, just when you want to really run in a straight line.”