O’Brien content to stay on familiar ground with Constitution River and Gstaad

Aidan O’Brien is optimistic Constitution River and Gstaad will show their true colours on Qatar Racing British Champions Day at Ascot.

The three-year-olds have been campaigned over a mile and a quarter and a mile respectively this season, with Constitution River winning the French Derby and Coral-Eclipse and Gstaad claiming Classic glory in the Irish 2,000 Guineas.

But O’Brien had been giving serious considering to switching the pair on Saturday, even going as far as supplementing Constitution River for the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes on Monday at a cost of £70,000.

Ultimately, however, connections have decided to give both colts another chance over their familiar distance.

“We were thinking very strongly of running Gstaad over a mile and a quarter and Constitution River over a mile,” he said.

“But the way the week went on and we saw it was going to be a very competitive Champion, we just thought it would be tough on Gstaad going into a mile-and-a-quarter race like that for the first time.

“We felt that Ascot suits him very well, he won the Coventry there and we think he’s an absolutely top-class miler.”

Constitution River has had to make do with minor honours in the Juddmonte International and the Irish Champion Stakes on his last couple of starts, hitting the front on both occasions before faltering late on.

While those defeats left O’Brien questioning his stamina, he is keen to try again now his string appears to have recovered from a mid-season blip.

“There were circumstances around a lot of the horses’ last runs because the horses were a little bit under the weather at the time,” said the Ballydoyle handler, speaking on a Champions Day media call.

“There were four, five or six Group Ones where they weren’t finishing (strongly) and they were finishing second, and then all of sudden everybody was coughing in the yard.

“Usually when they start coughing it’s at the end of what they’ve had, there were SAAs (Serum amyloid A) spiking up in their bloods for two or three months and then they disappeared for no reason.

“That usually means infection and we couldn’t find any infection. It was probably hanging around for a long time, we’ve given a lot of horses a course of antibiotics since and we think it has helped them and we’re happy that their form has come back to where we think it should be.

“We were going to do it (switch races), but the more we thought of it we felt it wasn’t fair to Gstaad to throw him into a mile and a quarter race of that calibre and it wasn’t fair on Constitution River to go back to a mile.

“It might have been a bit of a knee-jerk reaction. I was saying to myself maybe I’ve been doing the wrong thing with them all year and maybe I was, but especially when it looks as though the ground is going to be nice, we’ll give them another go and we’re going to find out a lot more.”

O’Brien also considered running his star stayer Scandinavia in the British Long Distance Cup, but he has now been put away for next season following his narrow defeat to Caballo De Mar in the Prix du Cadran a fortnight ago.

“Obviously Scandinavia would have been a very strong chance, but the lads felt maybe he’s had plenty of racing this year” O’Brien added.

“He is very well and his last piece of work was very good. We went to France expecting the ground to be gone for Ascot and with the benefit of hindsight maybe we should have skipped France.

“We went to France and ran a very good race, maybe we would have preferred a stronger gallop because he does stay very well and we felt he was a little bit unlucky.

“We just thought looking at the Ascot Gold Cup next year, we just felt it was the right thing to wait.”