LONDON // Last Saturday trainer Richard Hannon revealed that he had been feeling the pressure before Night Of Thunder became his first Group 1 winner for Godolphin in the Lockinge Stakes at Newbury.
Fast forward a week and trainers Willie McCreery and Roger Varian are far more positive ahead of what will be their first runners in the Godolphin blue at the highest level.
McCreery will saddle Devonshire, a filly who was this week supplemented to the Irish 1,000 Guineas at the Curragh on Sunday, after Varian has run the Godolphin acquisition Belardo in the Irish 2,000 Guineas at the same track on Saturday.
For McCreery, the experience is a little easier.
This is not the first time he has trained a horse for Godolphin, as this is his second full season with horses carrying the royal blue silks in his County Kildare yard in Ireland.
“John Ferguson’s personal assistant gave me a call a few years ago to ask whether I would take a few horses for them,” he said from his Rathbride base.
“To be honest with you, I thought somebody was making a joke out of me. Obviously, I had to say yes.”
It was Screenshot, a colt who cost just 38,000 guineas (Dh227,322), who became the first horse owned by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, to come through McCreery’s doors.
The colt never won and after seven inauspicious runs he was packed off to the sales.
In 2014 McCreery trained five for Sheikh Mohammed and Godolphin, with Devonshire being one of three winners for him.
“The pressure is not getting to me at all,” he said. “You could put pressure on yourself because you want to do well for a very well-run worldwide organisation, and you are just a cog in the wheel and want to keep the wheel going. But not me.” For Varian, Belardo is the first horse he has trained for the international stable.
To be exact, Belardo is only part-owned by Godolphin after they stepped in last season to buy a controlling interest from Prince Faisal of Saudi Arabia in October.
Belardo was the champion juvenile last season, having won the Group 1 Dewhurst Stakes at Newmarket.
As is becoming a more regular tactic for Godolphin, Varian was allowed to keep the horse at his Newmarket yard.
The colt put in a lacklustre display on debut when eighth to the Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid pair of Muhaarar and Estidhkaar in the Group 3 Greenham Stakes at Newbury last month.
That race was run on good-to-firm ground, but with the Curragh still riding on the yielding side of good, Varian is bullish of being able to outrun Gleneagles, the English 2,000 Guineas winner owned by Coolmore. “He didn’t have a hard race. He’s a fresh horse,” Varian said of Belardo. “His work had been excellent leading up to that race and excellent since.
“We’d be very confident that, provided the ground isn’t too quick, we’ve a very good horse on our hands still.
“He was a high-class juvenile and I have every faith that he will show his best form again.”
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