Can Auguste Rodin become one of the Ballydoyle greats?

By John Ingles

Horse Racing

Sat July 01, 2023 · 1y ago

With Auguste Rodin odds on to complete the Derby double, John Ingles assesses how he measures up against the best Aidan O'Brien has trained.

If Auguste Rodin lands the very short odds and adds the Irish Derby to his success at Epsom last month, he’ll provide his trainer Aidan O’Brien with his hundredth success in a European classic. So far, fourteen of those classic victories have been gained in the Irish Derby alone, and four of those wins – Galileo (2001), High Chaparral (2002), Camelot (2012) and Australia (2014) – have come from colts who had won at Epsom.

Auguste Rodin would therefore be in very good company if he becomes his trainer’s fifth dual Derby winner, and there doesn’t seem much doubt that the stable’s latest Derby winner is held in very high regard at Ballydoyle. Defeat in the 2000 Guineas might have dashed any hopes of a triple crown bid for Auguste Rodin, but there was no lasting damage done to his three-year-old season, as some had feared, and he restored his reputation with a high-class performance at Epsom. That form has already been franked, notably by runner-up King of Steel winning the King Edward VII Stakes in clear-cut fashion at Royal Ascot.

Auguste Rodin currently has a Timeform rating of 125p, which doesn’t yet put him among the very best horses Aidan O’Brien has trained, though the ‘p’ on his rating indicates there’s further improvement to come in a career which, after all, is only six races old.

A list of O’Brien’s best horses according to Timeform ratings can be found here. A minimum rating of 132 – which is top-class on the Timeform scale – sets a high bar which Auguste Rodin would need to clear to become a member of this select group which includes three of those four dual Derby winners – Galileo (134), High Chaparral (132) and Australia (132) - but not Camelot (128), which shows what an elite group Auguste Rodin is trying to join.

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It also highlights the distinction between reputation and the sometimes harsher reality of form. O’Brien described Camelot as having ‘an incredibly special amount of class’ after he’d justified favouritism in the 2000 Guineas and, after he’d landed the odds by five lengths in the Derby to keep his own triple crown bid alive, it certainly looked as though he was an above-average Derby winner and well ahead of his fellow three-year-olds. Camelot initially had a Timeform rating of 130p after the Derby, but, as his essay in Racehorses went on to note, ‘by the end of the season, however, no-one could look at the bare form of the Derby and conclude that it was anything other than an ordinary renewal.’

Camelot was only workmanlike when following up on softer ground in the Irish Derby by two lengths (‘we just about got away with it’ was John Magnier’s comment afterwards), but a shock defeat which ended his triple crown bid in the St Leger and then another reverse when second favourite for the Arc meant that Camelot’s three-year-old campaign ended on a low note, while keeping him in training at four failed to enhance his standing either.

It’s Galileo who sets the standard among O’Brien’s Derby winners. He was his trainer’s first Derby winner at Epsom, putting up the most impressive performance since Generous ten years earlier when storming away with the 2001 renewal by three and a half lengths. An easy-four length win at the Curragh from the Italian Derby winner Morshdi (with Epsom runner-up Golan the same distance back in third), didn’t require Galileo to improve on his Epsom performance but was another top-class display.

But Galileo’s very best efforts – and this might be significant as far as Auguste Rodin’s future rating is concerned – came when he tackled top-class older opposition. Having beaten Godolphin’s five-year-old Fantastic Light in the King George, Galileo lost his unbeaten record to the same rival by a head in the Irish Champion Stakes, but that too rates as one of his best performances.

Just a year later High Chaparral also completed the Derby double, he too landing short odds at the Curragh without needing to repeat his Epsom form. It’s worth remembering, though, that High Chaparral wasn’t Ballydoyle’s number one Derby contender in 2002. That honour went to the 2000 Guineas runner-up Hawk Wing, who heads the list of O’Brien’s best horses with a rating of 136. In a Derby which tested stamina, High Chaparral saw the trip out better than Hawk Wing (who wasn’t tried over a mile and a half again), beating him two lengths, with the runner-up twelve lengths clear of the third.

There was a very strong crop of three-year-old colts at Ballydoyle that year, headed by Rock of Gibraltar (133), who’d beaten an unlucky Hawk Wing on the other side of the track in the Guineas. Hawk Wing, who didn’t need to improve on his Derby effort to land the odds in a substandard Eclipse next time, was rated 127 at three but earned his career-best rating from his spectacular return in the Lockinge Stakes as a four-year-old. Hawk Wing always had a big reputation – he started favourite for the 2000 Guineas as well as the Derby – and belatedly produced a performance to match at Newbury when spreadeagling his field to win by eleven lengths.

As for High Chaparral, who was rated 130 at three, he became a rare Derby winner to improve his rating at four when his wins included the Irish Champion Stakes and the Breeders’ Cup Turf. He dead-heated with the American four-year-old Johar at Santa Anita, but with the pair of them just a head in front of the top-class Falbrav in a really strong renewal, that was a better effort than when High Chaparral won the same race outright the year before.

Ballydoyle’s latest colt to complete the Derby double, Australia, had the easiest task of the four at the Curragh. He’d looked a star in the making when justifying odds of 11/8 at Epsom, and when the Derby runner-up and future St Leger winner Kingston Hill was a late withdrawal from the Irish Derby, Australia was left with only four rivals to beat at odds of 1/8, not for the first time his trainer saddling the first three home. Again, though, it was in open-age contests later in the season that Australia showed his very best form, winning the Juddmonte International and unlucky not to beat the runner-up in that contest, The Grey Gatsby, for a second time when going down by a neck after a wide trip in the Irish Champion Stakes.

Also on the list of Aidan O’Brien’s highest-rated horses are a couple of Irish Derby winners who had been beaten at Epsom beforehand. Dylan Thomas was only his stable’s third string when a close third to Sir Percy in a bunched finish to the 2006 Derby but improved again when an impressive winner at the Curragh. However, it was as a four-year-old that Dylan Thomas developed into a top-class performer (rated 132) with further Group 1 wins in the Prix Ganay, King George, Irish Champion Stakes and Arc.

Three years after Dylan Thomas, Fame And Glory started favourite for the Derby only to come up against an outstanding colt in Sea The Stars. In the latter’s absence after heavy rain at the Curragh, Fame And Glory improved to land the odds by five lengths in the Irish Derby, putting up a top-class effort of his own, and produced another, although no match for Sea The Stars once again, when runner-up in the Irish Champion Stakes.

Later in his career, Fame And Glory had his attentions turned to staying contests, winning the Gold Cup as a five-year-old, but his best annual rating (133) came at four when his wins included the Tattersalls Gold Cup (by seven lengths) and the Coronation Cup.

From the same crop as Fame And Glory came another of O’Brien’s best horses, Rip Van Winkle (134). He too came up against Sea The Stars at three, finishing fourth in the Derby after filling the same place behind Sea The Stars in the 2000 Guineas but getting closest to him when beaten a length in the Eclipse. That remained Rip Van Winkle’s career-best effort, though he subsequently dropped back to a mile to win the Sussex Stakes and Queen Elizabeth II Stakes later in the year and won another Group 1 at four in the Juddmonte International.

It’s likely that Auguste Rodin won’t need to improve upon, or maybe even match, his Epsom form to become Ballydoyle’s latest colt to complete the Derby double at Epsom and the Curragh. But it could well put him on course for a bigger effort further down the line. Only time will tell if he goes on to join some of his illustrious former stablemates among the very best performers to have passed through his trainer’s hands, but if there is a top-class performance in Auguste Rodin, it will probably be a clash with older horses which brings it out of him.

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