TRUE Love’s defeat by Power Blue in the Phoenix Stakes was one of the hardest results of the season to explain but try we must; there is a temptation to fall back to the cliché that ‘they’re not machines’ but that should be a last resort, allowing that her post-race lameness likely played a part.
But so too did the pace. True Love had won the Railway Stakes over six furlongs on her previous start but that was slowly run and emphasised speed whereas this was a true test which was surely a plan by Amo Racing.
Power Blue got to halfway 0.54 seconds quicker than his stablemate Bucanero Fuerte, a 115-rated older sprinter, had done in the previous Group 3 over the same trip and while he slowed from there, the damage was done to True Love for all she wasn’t helped by Ryan Moore briefly dropping his reins.
From there, Power Blue showed a good attitude to hold on, though the standard of the race was not as strong as it can be with no Ballydoyle colt of note in the field while neither was there a meaningful English raider. Another takeaway is that the race may also have revealed a blueprint for how to beat True Love over six furlongs.
Saturday was a terrific day for Amo Racing, Bucanero Fuerte producing another likeable performance to win the Phoenix Sprint Stakes. He did everything right here, breaking sharply, travelling well and finding plenty late and, aside from a period in the second half of last season when he may still have been recovering from the after-effects of colic, his record is rock solid.
Top-rated sprinters
The win saw him bumped up to an official mark of 115 and with Arizona Blaze on 113, Amo and Adrian Murray now have the two top-rated sprinters in Ireland. The sprint scene has been a puzzle in 2025 though hardly such a muddle that Irish horses are at the top yet Lady Iman and Arizona Blaze head the betting for the Nunthorpe at the time of writing.
Irish runners have struggled mightily in British sprints recently, however. Since 2020, just two Irish-trained horses have won a British group sprint for three-year-olds and older, Thunderbear and Little Big Bear, while the last Irish-trained winner of the British Group 1 sprint was Ten Sovereigns in the 2019 July Cup.
If Irish-trained sprinters suddenly being the best around felt like we have entered a simulation, then the win of Misson Control in the six-furlong maiden seemed to confirm it. Not that there was anything strange about his trainer, rider, colours or breeding but rather that he was a gelding.
He was just the fifth individual gelding to run for Aidan O’Brien since 2017, the trainer seeming to have moved away from them entirely of late, and he must have been a bold boy at home with the trainer saying afterwards that ‘he was a bit worse than green.’
Of the other winners on the card, Sarahmae is a name to note. The five furlong handicap she won only had seven runners, but she impressed with how she travelled and was not all out to win while her record over the minimum now reads: 6144141.
Her previous run had come in a hot three-year-old only premier handicap back in June, but she was given a break after that following a busy period and seems to have returned better than ever with Denis Hogan suggesting afterwards that soft ground will see her to even better effect.
THE announcement last week that the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board [IHRB] were no longer using the British Horseracing Authority [BHA] to monitor betting patterns on Irish racing was surprising, and not a little discouraging for punters betting on the sport.
As a state-funded body, the IHRB needs to justify its expenditure but the quoted figures of €350,000 seem relatively minor when compared to the betting turnover, even allowing that those numbers have dropped in recent years.
The BHA operates in a different jurisdiction, but Britain and Ireland are heavily linked with a significant proportion of money bet on Irish racing taking place in Britain, whether it be in shops or online with there being so much overlap between the betting companies in both places.
It is hard to see the benefit of having less information and fewer eyes on the markets and the concern is that it will make bringing betting-related cases to justice even more difficult while one would have liked more detail from the IHRB about what this partnership will be replaced with.
WITH the first Group 1 of the season for juveniles run last weekend, now is a suitable time to take stock of the juvenile scene in Ireland so far in the 2025. The attached table shows the top five trainers in terms of winners trained, taking in only Irish races through the end of last weekend.
It is business as usual at the top end with Aidan O’Brien and there has been no real gender divide this so far season for Ballydoyle, his colts winning and placing at 30.9% and 63.2% respectively, his fillies similar at 28.6% and 64.3% respectively. He has run over twice as many colts (68) as fillies (28), however.
Ger Lyons has maintained an excellent strikerate of 24.5% and while fillies like Lady Iman and Suzie Songs have been his star performers, there are some decent males in there too, some of which have been catching the market unawares.
Sir Alfie won at 22/1 at Down Royal in June and Geryon popped up at 18/1 on Saturday while Lyons expressed surprise that Howd’yadoit was able to win the Ballyhane.
Donnacha O’Brien has found good types like Havana Anna and A Boy Named Susie but has taken a lot of volume (51 runners) to get there while Gavin Cromwell has done well with his first-time starters, all four of his winners coming on their racetrack debut.
Of the bigger yards, two are having a quiet time with their juveniles. Johnny Murtagh is 1/46 with 11 places though that might be less of a worry given the trainer is better with older horses.
More concerning is the performance of Jessica Harrington who is yet to have a juvenile winner, currently 0/51 with 10 places having had 32 individual runners.
A couple from the yard have shaped okay in the last week like Pierre Grosse and Nautic Star, but they are way behind the norms over previous years.
2016 was the last time that Harrington failed to break double figures with juvenile winners in Ireland while the yard has averaged 21 two-year-old winners per season in the last five years.