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Donnacha starting to edge the sibling rivalry as Shale exacts Gorgeous revenge

Shale on top in the Moyglare Stud Stakes
Shale on top in the Moyglare Stud StakesCredit: Patrick McCann

Sibling rivalry in the O’Brien clan is played out on a different level to that of your average mortal and the youngest son of Irish racing’s most illustrious tribe is beginning to shade the bragging rights against the eldest.

In Joseph O’Brien’s first season training in 2016, it was in the Moyglare Stud Stakes that he secured a landmark first Group 1 with Intricately, who was ridden by none other than Donnacha, likewise then enjoying his breakthrough in the highest echelon as a rider.

Donnacha, who at 22 is the infant of Aidan and Annemarie’s quartet, would go on to win a further nine Group 1s in the saddle, including four Classics, plus two championships.

He sure is squeezing a lot in. At the Curragh on Sunday, in his initial season with a training licence, he produced Shale to turn the tables on his brother’s Debutante Stakes conqueror Pretty Gorgeous with a determined triumph in the Moyglare. It was the third time they've met and Shale now shades it two-one.

This was O'Brien's first Group 1 in Ireland as a trainer, but, remarkably, a third in three countries following Fancy Blue’s victories in the Prix de Diane and the Nassau Stakes. It is a scary thought given what Joseph has gone on to achieve, but he is starting to show up the Owning handler as being only mildly exceptional.

Shale provides Galileo with his 88th individual Group 1 winner when winning the Moyglare Stud Stakes
Shale battles hard to hold off the challenge of Pretty GorgeousCredit: Patrick McCann

O'Brien is also a year younger than the elder brother was when winning the same race, so that will help with the slagging.

The caveat, of course, is that few others have access to pedigrees as pristine as Shale’s, another Coolmore-bred daughter of the indomitable Galileo and out of the 2012 1,000 Guineas heroine Homecoming Queen. Still. They’re not exactly squandering the privilege.

Pretty Gorgeous had been heavily backed into 11-10 favouritism to reassert her superiority, and her rider Declan McDonagh clung on to Ryan Moore’s coattails early on. When Shale came there to challenge two furlongs out, it looked like Pretty Gorgeous might drift in on her slipstream.

However, Shale found plenty for Moore when the gloves came off and eventually battled to a three-parts-of-a-length success. It was two-and-a-half lengths back to Oodnadatta, as the two protagonists stamped their authority all over this €250,000 event.

“She was nearly the first off the bridle and I thought she wasn’t going to do anything at halfway, but she found a lot for pressure and she toughed it out so it was a very good performance,” said the winning handler with all of his trademark cool before suggesting the Fillies’ Mile or the Prix Marcel Boussac would be next on the agenda.

Of her steady improvement, this being her fifth start, he added: “She was always a nice filly but she wasn’t one we thought would be capable of winning a Moyglare at the start of the year. She has kept progressing the whole way and even her last run was good.”

Shale was promptly cut to deliver the fledgling stable its first English Classic, with most firms cutting her to a general 12-1 ante-post favourite for the 2021 1,000 Guineas. The trainer's big brother has yet to plunder a Guineas, so he might just beat him to that as well.

That said, Joseph promptly made amends when Thunder Moon swooped for National Stakes glory, and the 2,000 Guineas is up first. It could be a big weekend in Newmarket for the O’Brien boys. Aidan who?


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Richard ForristalIreland editor

Published on 13 September 2020inReports

Last updated 08:22, 14 September 2020

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