John Magnier

MV Magnier has described the Japan Cup as "the main aim" for Auguste Rodin (Ire) where the six-time Group 1-winning son of Deep Impact (Jpn) will bid to bridge a gap of almost two decades to the last European-trained winner of the race.  Speaking at the JRHA Select Sale in Japan last week, Magnier firmed up plans for Auguste Rodin, who is the culmination of over 10 years of Coolmore breeding mares to Japanese-based stallions.  He also confirmed that Coolmore has supported Kitasan Black (Jpn), the sire of Equinox (Jpn),...

Wesley Ward admitted he was looking for an easy spot for  White Sands (Into Mischief) to make her first racetrack appearance, but when the half-sister to sprint champion Jackie's Warrior (Maclean's Music) romped by 9 1/2 lengths in her debut at Belterra Park in May, the trainer immediately circled the Prairie Gold Juvenile Stakes on his calendar. The filly duly delivered again in that 5 1/2-furlong event, defeating the boys in a 13 3/4-length demolition at Prairie Meadows last Saturday. "We had a long time with her," Ward said of...

John Magnier was in mischievous form at Sandown after he and his wife Sue had joined the wider Coolmore team for celebratory photographs with their Derby and Eclipse winner City Of Troy.  It has been well documented how important this colt is to the operation: the European champion two-year-old of 2023, he is by the Triple Crown winner Justify, who was recruited at vast expense to stand at Coolmore's Ashford Stud in Kentucky. For that stallion to prove himself adept at siring top-class runners on both dirt and turf would...

Needless to say, all four tried to reject their billing. Between them, after all, they have spent the better part of three centuries dealing with that vehicle of humility, the Thoroughbred. To everyone else present, however, the opportunity to tap into the experience of four such sages as Bill Landes, Frank Penn, Tom Thornbury and John Williams fully justified the Kentucky Thoroughbred Farm Managers Club in promoting their latest meeting in Lexington as "An Evening with Legends." Each, moreover, could be consoled that one of the first tasks addressed--an acknowledgement...

Granted the ideal conditions of fast ground and a true pace to run at, Auguste Rodin (Ire) (Deep Impact {Jpn}--Rhododendron {Ire}, by Galileo {Ire}) carved a landmark 400th group 1 success for Aidan O'Brien as he became the first Derby hero to come back and win at Royal Ascot since Royal Palace (GB) in 1968. Unique in his achievement in that he was augmenting his Blue Riband triumph with this feature prize in its current guise as a group 1, Ballydoyle's ground-breaking colt put any doubts that he was yesterday's...

For the second year running, the G1 Epsom Derby winner was bred from one of Coolmore's countless Galileo (Ire) mares outcrossed to an American sire line. But whereas Sunday Silence's son Deep Impact (Jpn) gave Auguste Rodin (Ire) further turf genes from his mother's European family, City Of Troy's sire is a conduit for virtually unadulterated dirt blood. Justify's first four dams are, respectively, by grandsons of Deputy Minister, Seattle Slew, Northern Dancer and Bold Ruler. The third of those names, of course, transformed the European breed, albeit alongside other...

Having long served as Champion Bore regarding the schism between gene pools either side of the Atlantic, I always find it curious that Europeans so readily shed their inhibitions about American stallions once a 2-year-old is introduced to their domestic market by a compatriot pinhooker. That's presumably because they are nowadays so enslaved by the clock--whatever their contrary claims--that pedigree has almost been neutralized at 2-year-old sales. Functionality is all. Admittedly an elite sire will put a premium on a bullet time. But just as unfashionable local stallions have achieved...

We could run the numbers, as they say. What they will tell us is that Aidan O'Brien has dominated racing both in his home country of Ireland and its nearest neighbour, where he will this Saturday be inducted into the QIPCO British Horseracing Hall of Fame.  It doesn't end there, of course. He is known and revered around the world, his tally of 419 Group or Grade 1 winners (including National Hunt) having also been chalked up in America, Australia, Canada, Dubai, France, Hong Kong and Italy. No other trainer...

Aidan O'Brien is busy preparing for what could turn out to be one of his boldest ever campaigns at Ballydoyle with plans in place for City Of Troy (Justify) to tackle the 2,000 Guineas and the Derby followed by an audacious tilt at the Travers S. on the dirt at Saratoga later this summer. Meanwhile, dual Derby and Breeders' Cup hero Auguste Rodin (Deep Impact {Jpn}), arguably the most important older horse to have been kept in training at Ballydoyle for many years, is set to get his campaign underway...

For the first time since 1996, Seamie Heffernan will not be based at Ballydoyle--but Aidan O'Brien's long and trusted ally has revealed that he still hopes to be riding big-race winners in the Coolmore colours in the future.  It has been one of the worst kept secrets in Irish racing for some time that Heffernan, one of the constants at Ballydoyle for almost three decades now, would not be returning to the fold.  And on the eve of the opening day of the Flat season in Ireland, Heffernan lifted the...

One way or another, plenty of people in our industry seem to think that it has reached a crossroads. But if a shutdown at the home of the Kentucky Derby makes us feel as though we can't get a break in the traffic, maybe we're just looking the wrong way. Because there's a chance that the real game-changing moment was happening 4,000 miles away, where the 244th running of the original Derby was last Saturday won by a horse excitingly equipped to open a new chapter in the story of...

We can harness Thoroughbreds to our best and worst, to our altruism or avarice--but thankfully we will never alter the essential, inherent wonder of the breed, nor maintain the illusion that we are ever truly in control of its destiny. There's a genuine possibility, this weekend, that a German colt could elevate himself to the top of the global sophomore crop by winning the G1 Japan Cup. Yet Tünnes (Ger) (Guiliani {Ire}) was a wholly inadvertent acquisition at the Baden-Baden yearling sales, his purchaser having dropped out at €20,000 only...