YOU don’t need to mark Verbal Dexterity up a jot in order to conclude that Jim Bolger’s colt put up a sparkling performance in winning the Group 1 Goffs Vincent O’Brien National Stakes.

It looked like Beckford was travelling better when he and Pat Smullen joined the leader at the two-furlong pole, but Verbal Dexterity picked up again when Kevin Manning asked him to, and he stayed on strongly all the way to the line.

Beckford is a high-class juvenile, Gordon Elliott’s horse won the Group 2 Railway Stakes and was only just beaten in the Group 1 Phoenix Stakes. So this is strong form, with the Group 2 Futurity Stakes winner and runner-up Rostropovich and Coat Of Arms back in third and fourth respectively.

This was the fourth time that Jim Bolger sent out the winner of the National Stakes. He won it in 2006 with Teofilo, in 2007 with New Approach and in 2012 with New Approach’s son Dawn Approach, and it is interesting that, after Sunday’s race, the trainer was not dismissing comparisons with those three luminaries, all multiple Group 1 winners.

A BOLGER PROJECT

Verbal Dexterity is a Bolger project from the tip of his nose to his tail. Bred by Jim Bolger and John Corcoran, he races in Jackie Bolger’s familiar purple and white silks. His dam, Lonrach, was bred by Jim Bolger, was trained by Jim Bolger and raced in Jackie Bolger’s colours, and his grandam, Luminous One, was also owned by Jackie Bolger and trained by Jim Bolger to win a Tipperary maiden.

Not only that, but Verbal Dexterity’s sire Vocalised also raced in the Bolger colours and was trained by Jim to win the Greenham Stakes and the Tetrarch Stakes. By the Seattle Slew stallion Vindication, who won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, Vocalised stands at Bolger’s Redmonstown Stud in County Wexford. The juvenile colt is wrapped whole in a Bolger blanket.

All three of Jim Bolger’s previous National Stakes winners went on to win the Dewhurst, and that looks like a realistic target now for Verbal Dexterity.