Aidan O'Brien is pondering his next move with Air Force Blue (War Front) following the colt's dismal effort in the G1 QIPCO 2000 Guineas last Saturday. The colt showed none of his sparkle, eventually finishing 12th of the 13 finishers and O'Brien is hoping it was a one off occurrence with a Curragh run possibly next on the agenda.
“Hopefully it won't happen again and the next decision we have to make is on where his next race will be,” said O'Brien. “We will have an eye on the [G1] Irish 2000 Guineas and will have a look at that and see what the ground is like before deciding if he runs in that or not.”
Reflecting on the Newmarket performance and what could have attributed to such a lacklustre display O'Brien added, “It was his first run of the year and in his second last piece of work he was very fast, so we were worried about if he would get the trip. Maybe I trained him too hard. I will probably change his work regime a little bit as I know what doesn't work with him and I need to find what does work for him.”
O'Brien and the Ballydoyle/Coolmore team had a better day on Sunday and the trainer reported a clean bill of health for his three fillies that occupied the first three placings in the G1 QIPCO 1000 Guineas. In particular the winner Minding (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}) came out of the race well.
“She seems to be fine this morning, she went out for a walk and a pick of grass and seems to be in good form,” said O'Brien. “I think she's very good. Everyone saw she went through the race very snug and when Ryan [Moore] let her down to quicken, she really got down and quickened and finished well. I don't think she was stopping at the line. You would have to be very impressed and happy with her.”
The trainer has such ammunition at his disposal that he is reluctant to commit any filly to any particular race.
“The next week or 10 days will tell a lot as there's a lot of trials going to be run so usually what happens is we watch those trials, see what happens and then everybody has a talk about where they're all going to go next,” he concluded.
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