IT might have seemed business as usual at Doncaster last Saturday as the Ballydoyle favourite Luxembourg won the Group 1 Vertem Futurity.

It was an 18th Group 1 win of the season for Aidan O’Brien yard, and how envious any stable would be to amass that total.

But take a look back through the season and some things seem a bit different from recent years.

Although that vital part of the flat season from the Derby in early June to September and Irish Champions Weekend, when the ground is generally decent and no horse shows the signs of fatigue from a few tough races, Ballydoyle were where they usually feature, by virtue of the top three-year-olds St Mark’s Basilica and Snowfall, who took seven Group 1s between them. Santa Barbara added two ‘easy’ ones in the US. But, in a season where we lost Galileo, there were many disappointments.

High Definition and Bolshoi Ballet were both one-time Derby favourites and the latter’s win in a US turf Grade 1 came in a race that was only added to the calendar in recent years are was an easier target, in terms of the opposition.

Older horses Japan and Mogul all but disappeared. Neither added much to their stallion prospects. Love didn’t prove the star we believed she was last year.

Reputations

The two 2020 Derby winners, Serpentine and Santiago, did nothing to add to their reputations either. The 2019 Irish Derby winner Sovereign’s US career ends up with him in the sales ring in Keeneland.

There were high hopes for the 2020 group winners Van Gogh and Battleground but both were gone as stallions to Japan and Turkey, their racing careers ended by July with nothing added as three-year-olds. Eight of the Group/Grade 1 wins were in France and the US.

Aidan’s domestic winner total was second this year to Joseph’s and just in line with Jessica Harrington and Ger Lyons.

The missing factor from the three-year-olds was that, with 11 Group 1 wins between them, none of St Mark’s Basilica, Snowfall, Mother Earth nor Santa Barbara were by Galileo.

And the yard’s pair of two-year-old Group 1 winners this season are also not by the great sire, as his immediate influence appeared to be on the wane before his death this year.

Of course many expected John Gosden to reveal his usual late-developing two-year-olds on to the early classic scene this year, but none was forthcoming. He didn’t have a runner in any of the British classics.

With two Group 1 juvenile winners of the seven Group 1 races in Britain and Ireland, things are still on track. In all recent seasons, there’s always been at least one win.

Of course all the exceptional achievements in previous years mean the bar is high. Even if Galileo was an important element in the glue that kept it all together, both Tenebrism and Luxembourg suggest little is likely to change next season. With some promising two-year-olds winning maidens in recent weeks, all could bounce back in 2021.