She may not rack up extended winning streaks like her old rival Enable – her career strike-rate, in fact, is below 50% – but Aidan O’Brien still felt able to describe Magical as “the ultimate racehorse” after a typically resolute success in the Champion Stakes gave the trainer his first success in the race here on Saturday. “Every day, she wakes up with a total clean sheet,” O’Brien said. “She accepts everything on the chin and says what do you want me to do today? It’s internally with her, it’s her mind. She never says no.”
The feature event on Champions Day was Magical’s ninth start of the season, just a fortnight after finishing fifth in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, and while the decision to switch the race to the hurdles track meant that the going was soft rather than heavy, it was still demanding enough to suck the enthusiasm from any horse sensing the end of a long campaign.
Magical, though, never looked likely to yield her lead after hitting the front under Donnacha O’Brien more than a furlong out. Addeybb stayed on to finish a three-quarter length second, with the Japanese mare Deirdre, back in third. It was the fourth Group One win of her career and even now, Magical may not be done for the season as a return to the Breeders’ Cup meeting for the Filly & Mare Turf is under serious consideration.
“She’s totally sound, mentally and physically,” O’Brien said. “Her mind is incredible. I think a mile-and-a-quarter is her ideal trip, but she gets a mile-and-a-half because of her class.
“The Arc was a strongly run race and she has come out of that and won here. She handles ease in the ground, she goes on fast ground, what can you say? The lads [in the Coolmore syndicate] will decide if we go to the Breeders’ Cup with her [but] if you asked her, she’d be delighted.”
Magical was a close second behind Enable in the Turf last year and would face another stern opponent in Chad Brown’s Grade One-winner Sistercharlie, the defending champion in the Filly & Mare Turf, if she heads to Santa Anita on 2 November. She is top-priced at 11-4 to round off her season with an extra flourish, while Sistercharlie is a 9-4 chance.
Magical’s win put the seal on an excellent afternoon for Donnacha O’Brien, who took over aboard his father’s main runners on the card after Ryan Moore, the stable jockey, made the long trip to Australia for an ultimately fruitless attempt to win a valuable race in Sydney overnight.
Father and son had earlier teamed up to bring an end to Stradivarius’s 10-race winning streak as Kew Gardens, last year’s St Leger winner, held John Gosden’s runner at bay by a nose in the Group Two Long Distance Cup.
This was Kew Gardens’s first success since the Doncaster Classic, in his first head-to-head with the horse who has dominated the staying division for the last two seasons. They traded blows for much of the straight, and both horses appeared to gain the upper hand at some stage before Frankie Dettori’s final thrust on Stradivarius came up agonisingly short.
Sedgefield 1.55 Heavenly Promise 2.30 Soloist 3.05 Western Ryder 3.35 Kingrullah 4.05 Kingswell Theatre 4.40 Snookered 5.15 College Oak
Kempton 2.15 Prefontaine 2.45 Oleg 3.20 Pacify (nb) 3.50 Tidal Watch (nap) 4.25 Itch Feet 5.00 Guerilla Tactics 5.35 Mason Jar
John Gosden, Stradivarius’s trainer, was inclined to blame the ground for the five-year-old’s first defeat for nearly two years, while acknowledging that Kew Gardens was a deserving winner. “It was too soft and he wasn’t entirely happy on it,” Gosden said.
“We came fairly close to pulling out, but it’s Champions Day and you let the day down if you don’t run Stradivarius. Take nothing away from the winner, we headed him and he’s come back. We’ll be back for the Ascot Gold Cup on good-to-firm, where we’ll be in good shape.”
Kew Gardens is also likely to be pointed towards the feature event at next year’s Royal meeting, having been forced to bypass his intended first meeting with Stradivarius in this year’s race due to injury.
“We were training him for the race and he got injured and it all went pear-shaped,” O’Brien said. “The Gold Cup will definitely be the target if he stays in training next year.”
King Of Change, the runner-up in the 2,000 Guineas back in May, staked a claim to be rated the season’s leading miler with a decisive success in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes, while Star Catcher, the 7-4 favourite, was Dettori’s only winner on the card in the Champion Fillies and Mares Stakes, his 18th Group One success of 2019.
