Two more runs before So You Think retires to Australia

4th June, 2012 - Posted by Elliot Slater - Comments Off

Aidan O’Brien’s high-class performer So You Think opened his account for the season when making mincemeat of the opposition to slam Famous Name by an easy six-lengths to land the Group 1 Tattersalls Gold Cup at the Curragh for the second year running and looks set to have just two more races before heading off to a well earned retirement at stud in Australia, writes Elliot Slater.

Landing his ninth top level success of a glittering career that has seen him establish himself as a star among horse racing tips in both the southern and northern hemispheres, the son of High Chaparral was having his first outing since finishing fourth to Monterosso when sent off favourite for the hugely valuable Dubai World Cup at Meydan in March, having ended last term running sixth to Drosselmeyer in the Breeders’ Cup Classic.

His run at Churchill Downs came at the end of a long campaign in Europe that saw the Aidan O’Brien-trained six-year-old finish a close second to the ill-fated Rewilding in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes at Royal Ascot, (a contest that is likely to be his next port of call this term), before winning the Group 1 Coral Eclipse Stakes at Sandown (beating the Derby winner Workforce), and the Irish Champion Stakes (beating the great Snow Fairy), after which he ran a fine fourth to Danedream in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe and was second to the French star Cirrus Des Aigles in the Group 1 Dubai Champion Stakes at Ascot in October.

His Curragh win on Sunday was effectively little more than an exercise canter as So You Think easily justified horse racing betting tips and slender odds of 2/11, an effort that should have O’Brien’s charge fully primed for the much tougher task at Royal Ascot and in the Coral Eclipse Stakes, which will almost certainly be his last run before retirement.