It was another banner weekend for Godolphin as the stable swept the two Grade I races for 2-year-olds at Keeneland. The filly Immersive (Nyquist) won Friday's GI Darley Alcibiades Stakes and finished things off with a very impressive win by the colt East Avenue (Medaglia d'Oro) in the GI Claiborne Breeders' Futurity. Both will appear next in the Breeders' Cup where they could garner favoritism in their respective races.
Leading the cheering section for Godolphin was its Director of Bloodstock, Michael Banahan, whose duties include overseeing the U.S.-based Godolphin runners. He the TDN Writers' Room Podcast Guest of the Week presented by Keeneland.
“I'm not too sure where to rank this among the great weekends we've had throughout the course of our time here racing in the U.S., but I would suggest that it's very close to the top,” Banahan said. “To have two 2-year-olds win on our home track, both by our own stallions, homebred horses, it was absolutely phenomenal. And it's obviously great to win at Keeneland. We love Keeneland. It being our home track, we have an awful lot of employees that can get out to the track, be engaged with the event and celebrate if we do happen to get to the winning line first as well. So I think that's maybe as big a part of it as anything else.”
East Avenue may have been the more impressive of the pair, especially when you consider that he drew in with only one prior start, which was a six-furlong maiden win at Ellis Park.
“We liked him from the get-go when he was a young foal and as a yearling,” Banahan said. “He was broken at Bridlewood. They do a fabulous job their with our horses and we liked him on the track down there. But we like a lot of them when they're down in Florida doing three-eighths of a mile and look good doing it. But he certainly did. We held him in very high regard. When he came up to Keeneland and joined Brendan Walsh's string up there, he had only maybe worked once, twice, and they were all pretty high on him as well. We were trying to temper our enthusiasm all the way through the summertime, knowing that he looked like a really, really nice horse.”
The GI Kentucky Derby is one of the few major races in the world that Godolphin has not won. Might East Avenue change that?
“Sheikh Mohammed loves to compete and try and win the biggest races globally,” Banahan said. “Not just the Kentucky Derby but the Breeders' Cup, the Arc, the Melbourne Cup. He loves competing at that top level. We were really excited about Essential Quality in the Derby. We though he had an unbelievable opportunity. He was favorite on the day. After the race lots of people would come to us and say, 'He was the best horse in the race.' But he didn't win. He only got fourth. So it would be wonderful for Sheikh Mohammed to have a horse in the Derby that could compete. I think winning that trophy would get him very excited. I know he was watching the race on Saturday night and so he's well aware of East Avenue, and I'm sure he was excited to see the talent that he showed that day.”
In our breeding spotlight section we looked at the WinStar stallion Nashville.
Elsewhere on the podcast, which is also sponsored by the Pennsylvania Horse Breeders' Association, West Point Thoroughbreds, WinStar, XBTV.com and the KTOB the team of Randy Moss, Zoe Cadman and Bill Finley reviewed the major races from last week, zeroing in on the 2-year-old males who ran in the Breeders' Futurity, the GI Champagne Stakes and the GI American Pharoah Stakes. The consensus was that Champagne winner Chancer McPatrick (McKinzie) was also impressive and should also run well in the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile.
The team also looked at the 2-year-old filly races from the weekend. Randy Moss gave high marks to GI Frizette winner Scottish Lassie (McKinzie), while Finley downplayed the accomplishment because of the weakness of the field. Moss, who also works for NBC Sports, explained why the Breeders' Cup decided to run the GI Breeders' Cup Classic in the middle of the card at 2:41 p.m. PT.
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