Ben Linfoot ponders why Coolmore aren't risking Churchill at Epsom

Galileo can do no wrong. The term super stallion does him no justice. The best of his stock are brilliant at two and improve. He can pass on stamina through dams that have pedigrees stacked with speed and vice versa. He’s sired two Derby winners. He sired Frankel.

What can he do next? Sire more Derby winners? Keep his best-ever son, Frankel, in the shade when it comes to the Stallion Stakes? Those two objectives will be firmly in mind for Coolmore, which makes this year’s Derby a fascinating renewal.

On the one hand we have Cracksman, a son of Frankel, trained by John Gosden and owned by Anthony Oppenheimer. They are going for their second Derby in three years following on from the success of Golden Horn in 2015.  

Then on the other we have Team Coolmore. A team of seven, by all accounts, including six sons of Galileo. Wings Of Eagles, by Pour Moi, is the odd one out with the other six; Cliffs Of Moher, Venice Beach, The Anvil, Douglas Macarthur, Yucatan and Capri all progeny of the 2001 Derby winner.

But this looks an open Derby. None of the trial winners screamed Classic winner, really. Which makes Churchill’s likely omission all the more interesting. He’s this year’s best three-year-old Galileo colt on racecourse evidence thus far and he already has one Classic in the bag thanks to his 2000 Guineas win.

The major reason for his Derby no show is, of course, his probable lack of stamina. The mile of the Guineas is the furthest he’s ever gone and the extra half-mile at a track like Epsom is a huge ask.

Looking at his pedigree, it has to be a doubt that he’d stay the trip. His dam, Meow, raced only at two and was a Listed winner over five furlongs, while her dam, Airwave, was a sprinter as well. Airwave’s dam, Karinga Valley, was another five-furlong winner as a juvenile and she was a half-sister to six winning sprinters.

Yet it must’ve been tempting for Coolmore to try and stretch his stamina to its very limit in the Derby. Last year Minding and Found, both by Galileo, both out of dams that never raced beyond a mile, won the Oaks and the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe respectively. In the latter, Found led home a one-two-three for Galileo to further underline his status as a super stallion.

To have a Galileo colt, like Churchill, that is so obviously bred for speed but has the brilliance and sheer temerity to stay a mile and a half in the Derby would be a huge win. Aidan O’Brien has always had his doubts, though, saying he has the mind and temperament that could see his stamina stretch to 10 furlongs while stressing anything further would be a severe step into the unknown.

And history tells us, while Coolmore are willing to take calculated risks with the race programmes of their best horses, they rarely take a Derby gamble with their Guineas winners.

Perhaps King Of Kings is to blame for that. He was O’Brien’s first 2000 Guineas winner, racing in the silks of John Magnier, and his next start came in the Derby. Straight from a mile up to a mile and a half, and at Epsom he finished stone last.

Since then their Guineas winners, bar Camelot, have avoided Epsom altogether. Rock Of Gibraltar and Footstepsinthesand never went further than a mile, while Henrythenavigator and Gleneagles both only tried 10 furlongs in the Breeders’ Cup Classic.

Camelot was a bit different, as he was a stoutly-bred son of Montjeu that got away with the trip in the Guineas before going on to win the Derby. Unfortunately, the Triple Crown dream died at Doncaster, but if there is ever to be another Nijinsky it’ll likely be thanks to a classy son of a Derby winner that wins the Guineas despite the distance.

When it comes to Coolmore’s Guineas horses running in the Derby it’s usually those that have been beaten at Newmarket. Like Hawk Wing and Rip Van Winkle. They carried the same stamina doubts, but they also had nothing to lose.

Churchill, it seems, has more on the line. He could have a relatively straightforward task in the Irish 2,000 Guineas, but things will get tougher after that. He doesn’t need a test like the Derby interrupting his season when he has races like the St James’s Palace Stakes, and a potentially mouth-watering re-match with Barney Roy and Al Wukair, to negotiate over an ideal distance.

It’s not as if O’Brien and Coolmore have an abundance of riches in the three-year-old mile division to call on if Churchill did move up in trip, either. Lancaster Bomber is a good horse, but was put in his place by Churchill in the Guineas, while Whitecliffsofdover and Orderofthegarter don’t look ready to step up to the plate.

Perhaps things would be a little different if the Commonwealth Cup didn’t exist. A few years ago, Caravaggio would’ve had to have run over a mile to get a Group One in the bag against his own age group before the end of June.

Both Stravinsky and Mozart, O’Brien’s exceptional sprinters around the turn of the century, dropped back from seven furlongs and a mile respectively to win a July Cup and a Nunthorpe apiece, and Caravaggio could be the superstar sprinter they’ve been looking for since that pair hung up their hooves.

The son of Scat Daddy doesn’t have to have his stamina stretched like they did, though, and that makes piecing the jigsaw together all the easier for O’Brien. Caravaggio sticks to sprinting, his Derby trial horses stick to the Epsom plan and Churchill sticks to cementing his legacy over a mile, for now.

Churchill isn’t running in the Derby because he doesn’t need to. But there’s plenty of time for risk-taking with this horse. You can be sure they will roll the dice with him over 10 furlongs eventually, be it at York, Leopardstown, Del Mar or even Churchill Downs in over a year’s time. Galileo can do no wrong, but a Breeders’ Cup Classic winner would be exceeding expectations, even for him.