Aidan O’Brien has a different sort of Derby-Oaks double in his sights in New York on Saturday night.
Bolshoi Ballet fluffed his lines as a heavy favourite for last month’s Epsom Derby but is a general 6-5 market leader for the $1 million Belmont Derby on Saturday.
He has been joined at the New York track by Santa Barbara who also failed to live up to expectations in the Oaks at Epsom behind her stable companion Snowfall.
However she is odds-on in some lists to secure Grade 1 success in the $700,000 Belmont Oaks on the same card.
O’Brien has won both races before. Athena landed the Oaks in 2018 while Deauville took the Derby two years previously.
Ireland’s champion trainer landed a first French Derby last month with St Mark’s Basilica and also struck for the first time in the French Oaks with Joan Of Arc.
In other news O’Brien’s star older filly Love has been cut to 15-8 favourite for the King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes later this month after Snowfall was taken out of the Ascot highlight on Tuesday.
The King George will be one of the first big races run in Britain after the projected lifting of crowd restrictions there which are likely to come into force on Monday July 19th.
Crowds of up to 4,000 have been permitted in England since May, apart from Royal Ascot last month where up to 12,000 were allowed.
“We’re looking forward to welcoming back a larger crowd than we’ve been able to and we’ll work on that in the next couple of days,” said Ascot’s director of racing, Nick Smith.
“It is early days. We will just develop a plan and see where that goes in the next couple of days. We’re moving in the right direction and we will look at the logistics and the planning and see that the numbers look like,” he added.
