Willie Mullins’s Breeders’ Cup champion Ethical Diamond lines up in Grade Two company in Kentucky on Saturday night, although he and two other Irish hopefuls on the card are racing for Premier League prize money.
Ethical Diamond will have Ryan Moore on board in the $2-million Turf Cup at the Kentucky Downs track, just 40 minutes north of Nashville. The race is off at 9.56pm Irish time and will be shown live on Sky.
America’s only all-turf course has been snootily likened to a point-to-point, but thanks to Casino gaming terminals and local development funds it financially operates in a different league to most other tracks.
Seven days of action in less than a fortnight is worth up to $37 million. Saturday night’s highlight, the Grade Two Nashville Derby (off at 10.36pm Irish time), featuring Aidan O’Brien’s Causeway and his son Joseph’s Nil Bua Gan Dua, is worth up to $3 million. Only the Kentucky Derby is worth more in the US in terms of three-year-old races.
In trying to promote Kentucky-bred horses, the full prize funds are only open to horses bred in the Bluegrass State. It leaves the Irish-bred Causeway and Nil Bua Gan Dua to compete for $1.75 million. Ethical Diamond is also Irish bred, making the full $2 million out of reach, but Mullins still has his sights on the reduced $500,000 first prize, as well as confirmed entry into the Breeders’ Cup.
The action takes place over the US Labor Day weekend, with Kentucky Downs offering a staggering $18 million in purses over three days. However, Saturday’s proceedings could have a very Irish stamp.
Causeway is a local 5-2 morning line favourite. Moore rides the colt, who finished last in July’s Grand Prix de Paris but won Royal Ascot’s King Edward VII Stakes. Joseph O’Brien has booked US-based Irish jockey Ben Curtis for the Gowran Listed winner Nil Bua Gan Dua. Curtis shared the 2010 apprentice jockeys’ title with O’Brien and Gary Carroll.
Ethical Diamond is behind local star Burnham Square in the betting, although the combination of Mullins and Moore, riding at Kentucky Downs for the first time, could help switch that around.
“He’s coming right at the right time. We’re happy with how he’s travelled, and he’s training very well at Churchill Downs,” Mullins told local media. Not surprisingly considering the horse’s hurdling experience, Mullins isn’t worried about the undulating course either. “I think he’s very adaptable, the track doesn’t concern me. I thought the track would be an asset for him.”
Ethical Diamond will be Mullins’s first runner at Kentucky Downs, but it won’t be his first experience of the course. In 1990, he accompanied Grabel, trained by his father Paddy, to the venue when it was known as Duelling Grounds, with Tony Mullins guiding the mare to victory.
Closer to home, the mixing of codes will be front and centre at Kempton on Saturday, when the 2023 Champion Hurdle winner Constitution Hill has a third start on the flat. Winner of his two starts earlier in the year, the outstanding jumper whose jumping fell apart climbs several levels in quality for the Group Three September Stakes.
Such is the level of popular engagement with Nicky Henderson’s star that he’s been heavily backed to win a race won twice previously by Enable and top-notch flat talent in Giavellotto and Kalpana in the last two years. However, he’s holds an official rating of 101, the lowest of the seven runners, and is over a stone inferior to the German Group One winner Tornado Alert.
It means Saturday’s Group One highlight, the eight-runner Betfair Haydock Sprint Cup, is being elbowed for profile.
Last year’s winner Big Mojo will try for a rare double in the six-furlong heat, which is without an Irish runner. Royal Ascot winner Almeraq dominated the betting this week ahead of King Of Blue, who possesses an unwanted race double of his own having finished runner-up for the last two years.
Soft ground will be something of a novelty for these sprinters this season, and Marvelman’s proven seven-furlong stamina on testing conditions make him look a likely contender to be staying on strongly at the end for Irish rider PJ McDonald.