Great Barrier Reef out to enhance O’Brien’s Juvenile Turf record

Great Barrier Reef will bid to provide Aidan O’Brien with a ninth victory in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf at Keeneland.

The Ballydoyle handler has won the last four editions of the Grade One contest, most recently with Gstaad, and looks set to launch a strong challenge once more.

Coventry Stakes winner Great Barrier Reef suffered an odds-on defeat in a Group Three at the Curragh on his return from two months off the track in August, but a creditable third place finish behind esteemed stablemate Darkness Falls in the Dewhurst at Newmarket last weekend appears to have booked his ticket to Kentucky.

“He ran very well and I was kind of surprised and delighted really,” O’Brien said of his Newmarket performance.

“He’d had a good break when he ran at the Curragh where he got chinned and just got tired. Then we tried to run him back again and he got sick and had a bad scope.

“It was a very serious run in the Dewhurst. We thought if he ran well we’d go on to the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile (Turf) with him because we thought he was a horse that would get seven furlongs and could get a mile, so that’s where we’re going next with him.”

Darkness Falls will not be heading across the Atlantic, with the Ballydoyle handler reiterating his belief he has a genuine Triple Crown contender on his hands for next season.

“We probably shouldn’t saying too much about it because I don’t want to put much too much pressure on everybody and every horse,” said O’Brien.

“We always thought he was that (Triple Crown) type of horse, but obviously the 2000 Guineas is a massive race to win first off and if that did work we’d take it one race at a time.

“Every year you are looking for a horse that could do it and it’s very rare really. This horse you would imagine would have gone on to a Futurity Trophy (at Doncaster), but John (Magnier) and the lads decided to go to the Dewhurst with him, which I thought was a massive call, but it was going to give us a big insight into next year with him.”

Darkness Falls won the Group One Golden Fleece Stakes over nine furlongs at Leopardstown prior to his Dewhurst success over seven, giving O’Brien hope that he could go one better than his sire Camelot managed by becoming the first horse since Nijinsky in 1970 to win the 2000 Guineas, the Derby and the St Leger.

“It’s a very difficult thing what he did, I don’t think anyone really realises,” he added.

“Running over a nine furlongs as a two-year-old is a long way and then to come back to seven furlongs in Newmarket is very, very difficult. If it wasn’t for the horse he is and the ability he has it wouldn’t have happened.

“At least now we’re happy training him for the Guineas and we’ll go on from there and see what’s going to happen.”