YOU get the sense from the number of times Wayne Lordan says he is happy with his decision to join Ballydoyle, that Fozzy Stack’s lightning start to his first season as licence-holder has been pointed out once or twice.
It is the way of things now, conventional media aping its social counterpart to an alarming degree. Judgements are immediate. The result is that they are often ill-informed. But if you want to go that route, you have no choice but to say that the move was justified within a month of the season kicking off.
There weren’t many blanks on Lordan’s CV, having enjoyed six Group 1 successes and almost half a century of group victories, entered the winner’s enclosure at Royal Ascot, Newmarket and York and steered equine superstars of the calibre of Legatissimo, Sole Power, Gordon Lord Byron, Slade Power, Lolly For Dolly, Duntle, Curvy and Sudirman to glory.
Now, thanks to the new association with Aidan O’Brien and Winter’s English 1000 Guineas triumph, he is a classic-winning jockey. He is already ahead of where he expected to be in the embryonic stages of the job but Lordan made the transfer to be exposed to a higher quality of horse on a consistent basis, and to have more opportunities in the elite contests.
At 35, it was now or never. People might have been taken by surprise when the news became public, but the rationale could not be sounder.
Some wondered about him not having an engagement in the Irish 1000 Guineas on Sunday – he had been entrusted with the responsibilities at Haydock the day before, which was notable even if Washington DC and Alphabet failed to fire.
With Ryan Moore around, he was unlikely to be reunited with his Newmarket partner at the Curragh, but on this occasion, Seamie Heffernan, Ana O’Brien and Padraig Beggy were given the leg up on the remaining Ballydoyle contingent. That is just the way it goes when you are part of a squad of jockeys that also includes Donnacha O’Brien, Colm O’Donoghue, Emmet McNamara and Michael Hussey.
NO-BRAINER
The point is, that had Lordan stayed where he was, he wouldn’t have been participating anyway. He would be fighting to make up the considerable gap left in his diary by the retirement of David Wachman.
He would not have won his maiden classic and would not be riding work on high-class animals day-in, day-out, at one of the most successful training establishments in the history of racing and under the watchful eye of the man who by the time he calls it quits, will be, by a multitude of light years, the most successful trainer of thoroughbreds the world has ever seen.
It was a no-brainer.
“When I made my decision I was happy with it,” declares Lordan for the first time. “When I started there I was made feel very welcome. I’m getting on great and I’ve no complaints. I’m tipping away and I didn’t expect to be riding a classic winner my first year there. It was a big bonus. It was something I’d wanted to do and it happened very quickly.”
How did the move come about, after 16 years with Tommy Stack and 12 with Wachman?
“With David retiring it was going to be a big loss for me. I was still riding for Stack’s, they have plenty horses and plenty winners every year. It was just something that came about. We sat down and spoke about it. I’m 35 and I thought it would be a good move for me and that’s how it turned out. It’s easy to say it now after winning a Guineas but at the time, I was pleased with the decision.”
Winning the Guineas “makes life a little bit easier” but Lordan is playing a long game and expects to have to be patient. He knew Winter well from her time at Wachman’s but her relocation to Ballydoyle had nothing to do with his.
“We always felt she was a very capable filly but it was a big decision for me because I was with Stack’s for 16 years. It wasn’t about one filly, it was about how my career was going to move forward in the future. I felt, for myself, it was time and a nice move.
“We’ve seen it down through the years. Aidan always has good horses running in races. He’d have three or four or five horses in a race. Them rides don’t come around too often. It’s hard to get one. I just thought if I had the chance to ride big winners, that might be the place to go.”
As Heffernan and O’Donoghue will tell you, there is no such thing as a beaten docket in a Group 1 when it’s trained by Aidan O’Brien.
“Definitely not. We all love riding winners but you get to the stage when you enjoy riding good horses in good races and they don’t come around too often.”
The Guineas was as routine as you could dream a classic win to be.
“I said it after the race in Newmarket and it kind of showed again on Sunday when she won, she’s a very straightforward filly. She jumps out, she travels, she’s a very high cruising speed and when you go forward on her, she puts her head down and just runs all the way to the line. So she’s a very uncomplicated filly.
“It was brilliant to win, a great feeling and I couldn’t believe that it would happen so quick.”
It was very evident from her performance six days ago that the daughter of Galileo and the Choisir mare Laddies Poker Two remains on the upgrade and could be a star of the summer and autumn.
“She’s a big filly. She was a big two-year-old and we always felt that she was a little bit weak but more than capable of winning her maiden very well.
‘I think that’s probably why it took her until her third start to win her maiden. When she won her two-year-old maiden David said that was enough for her and left her alone. She’s obviously done well over the winter and as you can see, she’s improving from run to run because she’s a big scopey filly. Hopefully she’ll keep improving.
“I ride Winter in her work and when you’re riding a filly like that who’s improving every time you ride her work it is very exciting and you just don’t know where it’s going to end. She’s coming forward at the right time of the year but we’re not even half-way through the year yet so who knows where it could end.”
One speculates where she rates alongside the brilliant horses he has partnered in the past.
LEGATISSIMO LEGEND
“Legatissimo was very, very good. When you’re talking about sprinting then, Slade Power, that’s a completely different horse. It’s hard to say because Legatissimo was a very good filly but Winter, I don’t think, has finished improving.”
Meanwhile, he is like a child in the ultimate sweet shop, which is an appropriate enough analogy for a pilot who can ride 8-4 and eat a bar of chocolate, ice cream or burger and chips, whenever the fancy takes him. It is probably significant that he has suffered very few injuries, the likelihood being that not having to battle the scales is a contributory factor in that record.
Not alone does he get a taste of the very best Ballydoyle has to offer, he get is benefiting from the genius of the greatest handler on the planet, and maybe Ireland’s greatest ever sportsperson. Aidan O’Brien continues to set new records, having now reached the 70s in terms of European classic winners, and become the first to do the clean sweep in the English and Irish Guineas.
Lordan cannot quite put his finger on what makes him so special but is taken by how the 47-year-old invariably makes the right call. “All good trainers and good coaches, their attention to detail is second to none. I’m not really sure after that. He just gets it spot on.
“For me at the moment, I love the routine. I’ve been made feel very welcome. There’s a great bunch of lads working there, everybody gets on and we have a bit of a laugh. But when you’re going out to ride work you could be riding anything, and that’s the buzz about it. That is the buzz of the whole thing.
“We chop and change. There’s plenty of us there and to get different opinions on the same horse has to be a huge help (as) I suppose every jockey doesn’t get the same feel off a horse.”
O’Brien has said on these pages that information is collected voraciously, all put into the mix.
“And it might be the smallest detail someone will say about a horse that can make a huge difference. And when we talk about Aidan being so good at what he does, he probably finds that little thing that makes the difference to the horse.”
The one blip so far came very early on, even before Newmarket, when he was handed a five-day suspension under the so-called Non-Trier Rule, the amended Rule 212.
It came after the O’Brien-trained Music Box finished third on her racecourse debut in Dundalk on March 31st. Though Lordan and O’Brien were cleared of schooling the newcomer in public, the penalties, which included a €2,000 fine for the trainer and a 42-day suspension for the horse, were upheld.
There were fears that the regulation would lead to a slew of bans but this hasn’t been the case. Whether that is to do with an easing off of implementation or a change in the way riders are acting on the track is hard to know. Lordan wouldn’t be drawn on that and has little to say on the entire episode, preferring to leave it in the rear-view mirror. It is clear that he doesn’t feel he did anything wrong however.
“It is what it is. It’s water under the bridge now. All I can say is at the time, I thought I was doing right by the filly and that’s it. I don’t have anything else really to say about it.”
Today, he rides in his third English Derby but despite the boss having six contenders, Lordan is engaged by Aidan’s son Joseph, who knows what it takes to win the race as a pilot. Rekindling is another ex-Wachman charge that he knows well and has won twice on, including the Group 3 Ballysax Stakes. He looks like he is crying out for 12 furlongs and could be a major player in a very open affair.
“He did nothing wrong in the Ballysax in Leopardstown. On the day he had Douglas Macarthur and Capri in the same race and he ran to the line quite well. He finished fourth in Dante after they got plenty of rain. I wasn’t there but the ground might have been plenty loose for him. And the winner of the race (Permian) has been supplemented for it. So you’d have to think there’s a chance that he could run well.”
DERBY CHANCE
Needless to say, the Ballydoyle sextet represent considerable danger?
“We know from experience down through the years, Aidan has a good habit of horses improving so you just don’t know. Most of them are by Galileo as well which is a plus in the armour. Any of them that will be going there will always have a chance.”
The Derby “is a great race” and Lordan’s record is good, which may be a testament to the universal range of skills he has picked up being reared in Upton, son of amateur jockey Pat and with trainer John Murphy and jockey Aidan Coleman among those within two miles of home. A star of the pony-racing circuit, he spent a couple of summers saddle trotting too for Matt Murphy in West Cork and won an All-Ireland in 1996. He still loves hunting.
In two previous rides in the Epsom showpiece, he has finished fifth, on Soldier Of Fortune, and third on Galileo Rock. That experience of the track and occasion is invaluable but there is always an unknown when it comes to the horses, even those that have had the benefit of numerous trips around Ballydoyle’s replica of Tattenham Corner.
“You probably don’t know until you get there. You’re cantering down the start and you think when you leave the stand that everything is gonna be nice and quiet but you still hear people screaming and roaring all the way down to the mile-and-a-half start so it all depends on how the horse takes it. You see it down through the years, you need a horse that ticks all the boxes to win a Derby.”
So how are the decisions made. Who rides what?
“I actually don’t know,” comes the surprising response.
You get told?
“That’s it. A lot of it goes through my agent Ryan McElligott. When I get the phone call to say I’m riding such and such a horse, I’m pleased and take it from there.”
So he just comes in, does his work and soaks it up. The benefits have come already but there will be many more.
“I’m very happy. I’m only there four or five months. I’m still learning some things that are different because I was with Stacks for 16 years and David for 12, so I’m learning away as the year goes on. Once I can keep everybody happy and am doing my job, I’ll be very pleased.”