Jessica Harrington knows the odds are against her when she sends out Green Impact to contest the G1 Irish Derby on Sunday. Not that she doesn’t have belief in her colt’s ability to face the expected favourite, the G1 Derby winner from Epsom, Lambourn, but Harrington is up against the king of the Curragh classic himself, Aidan O’Brien.
The master of Ballydoyle has five runners in the field of 10, which could reduce to nine if Charlie Johnston’s Derby runner-up Lazy Griff reroutes to France for better ground in the G1 Grand Prix de Paris.
O’Brien has won the mile and a half race 16 times – all for the Coolmore partners in some form – since his first runners in the race were beaten to third and fifth in 1996. He didn’t have to wait long for his first win, though, as Desert King set him away in 1997. Back then, he was the young sensation; now, he’s the dominant veteran, the man who made the phenomenal the normal.
His Balldoyle runners have been like a juggernaut in the mile and a half feature this century: he won back-to-back with Galileo and High Chaparral in 2001 and 2002; he won seven in a row from 2006 through 2012; and he’s on a hat-trick again after the wins of Auguste Rodin and Los Angeles.
“I love going in as the underdog and we’ll do our best,” said Harrington, unfazed by the task yet realistic as to its challenges.
Her colt goes into Ireland’s premier classic buoyant off a Listed win in the Glencairn Stakes, having previously placed sixth in the G1 2,000 Guineas in early May – when the ground was too firm and he lost a shoe – and then opted out of the G1 Prix du Jockey Club.
“This has been the plan, we decided to reroute to the Glencairn and then on to this one, which we’re very happy to run in,” Harrington told Idol Horse.
Meanwhile, O’Brien’s team has a familiar make-up: the Derby winner Lambourn; the Lingfield Derby Trial victor Puppet Master; Thrice, a long way behind Lambourn in the G3 Chester Vase but a Group 3 winner since; the King George V Handicap runner-up Serious Contender; and the front-running G2 Queen’s Vase fourth Shackleton.
Front-runners trained by O’Brien in the Irish Derby have been a common sight ever since his Urban Ocean took them along in 1999, only for the exceptional Montjeu – trained in France for Coolmore – to sweep by.
The first time a Ballydoyle horse set the tempo and a stablemate won the race came in 2002 when Sholokhov led until the straight. He faded as another Ballydoyle galloper Ballingarry took up the baton, and ultimately High Chaparral came through to win for O’Brien in the first of eight one-two-three finishes for the stable.
A year later, High Country forged a massive lead, followed by stablemate Handel who took it up when he could give no more, and that tactic has been employed by O’Brien’s jockeys several times in the race: High Country’s exertions were in vain, though, as Alamshar won for the Aga Khan.
Balllydoyle runners have set the pace in the Irish Derby 17 times, leading to 12 of the 16 O’Brien-trained winners. Sovereign even made all in 2019 at odds of 33-1, beating into second the 5-4 favourite Anthony Van Dyck. That was in a field of eight.
Harrington is not unduly concerned by the Ballydoyle approach. She favours leaving the tactics to her jockey Shane Foley, who like the trainer is chasing a first Irish Derby win.
“Shane’s got to ride it as he finds it,” Harrington said. “I think that’s the way to do it: don’t make too many plans and see how it pans out. That’s how I would attack it. I can’t be telling him, ‘You’ve got to be first here, second there, sit in here or sit in there,’ you don’t know how the race is going to develop.”
Green Impact made the running in the Glencairn but that was not the preferred option, so there is little expectation that he will take on a pace-forcing Ballydoyle leader up front at the Curragh.
“He’s very, very laidback; wonderful temperament,” Harrington said. “But he doesn’t do much once he hits the front, and it didn’t really suit the other day because he had to make all his own running; nothing else was going to make it and we needed to make it a bit more of a stamina test, not a sprint; so that’s really why we did it like that.
“He’s bone idle, but as soon as something comes to him … you know he beat off two horses that day, one came to him, the next one came to him and at the line he was going away. I was happy with it.”
Green Impact is one of two colts in the race owned by Hong Kong-based Marc Chan, the other being the British-trained raider Sir Dinadan from the Ralph Beckett yard. Beckett also has his G2 Dante Stakes winner Pride Of Arras, a disappointment in the Derby when he seemed at odds with Epsom’s difficult contours. That Dante form is looking flimsy now and took further blows at Royal Ascot.
The other non-Ballydoyle challenger is another under an O’Brien’s watch: Tennessee Stud, third in the Derby last time, is trained by Aidan’s son, Joseph, twice an Irish Derby winner as a jockey and once so far as a trainer.
But Green Impact is something special for Chan, being the first horse he bred, from a Galileo mare he bought in foal, a Coolmore cast-off at that.
Green Impact has had the upper hand against a well-touted O’Brien-trained horse before, though. He defeated Delacroix twice last year, the second time in the G2 KPMG Champions Juvenile.
But Harrington agreed with the notion that her colt was the forgotten horse this spring as Delacroix won two trial races to start as favourite for the Derby at Epsom, only to disappoint.
“I think so, yes, but I shall let it be,” she added. “I like being forgotten.” ∎
