The prestigious Ebor Festival recently took place at the iconic York Racecourse, and one of the star attractions of the four-day meeting was the Aidan O’Brien-trained Paddington — who has received plenty of plaudits and gained a mass following this season due to his meteoric rise from a handicap horse to a multiple Group 1 winner.
The three-year-old was attempting to make it a fifth victory in a row at the top level in the Juddmonte International Stakes on the opening day of the Ebor Festival, and with just three rivals entered to take him on in the £1 million contest, Paddington was heavily fancied to complete the impressive feat at odds of 4/6 on sites like Paddy Power.
However, the trainers and connections who shied away from facing the Coolmore Stud horse must have rued their decision not to run at York as a lacklustre showing from Paddington resulted in him finishing third behind John and Thady Gosden’s duo Mostahdaf and Nashwa — who landed the father/son joint-trainers over £780,000 in prize money thanks to their 1-2.
Master handler O’Brien was quick to blame himself after Paddington’s costly flop in the Juddmonte International, claiming that he might have worked the three-year-old too hard in what has been an incredibly busy campaign for a top-level horse of his age — after all, his York outing was his seventh race of the season and considering five of those have been in Group 1s, that’s very taxing.
“He ran a great race, he had a tough race the last day and maybe it was a race too many for him,” O’Brien claimed afterward. Maybe I just pulled the elastic band too long – that’s the reality. He had a tough race in Goodwood on soft ground. He had to fight twice in Goodwood and it just told today.
“He was just a little bit down in himself. Maybe I should have waited and gone to Leopardstown (for the Irish Champion Stakes) to give him a bit more time. He’s only a baby three-year-old and Ryan [Moore] felt he was just a little bit flat. He was in good form and obviously we were happy to come here, but you don’t really know until the speedometer goes to red.
“Frankie [Dettori] went evenly strong all the way and Ryan said he didn’t travel with his usual fluency, but he still ran very well.”
So, what is next for Paddington after this unexpected setback? Well, it will come as no surprise given O’Brien’s comments about overworking the three-year-old so far this year that he plans to give him a bit of a break, which means we aren’t to see him in upcoming Irish Champion Stakes or in the Prix De l’Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp on October 1.
But we can still expect to see the fifth-ranked horse in the world back in action at British Champions Day at Ascot on October 21. Paddington currently holds two entries in the end-of-season finale, one in the Champion Stakes and the other in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes. The latter is the likeliest scenario, and the three-year-old is a general 3/1 (or 4.00 if you use the Paddy Power odds converter) for the contest, which would see him drop back down to a mile.
Confirming his intentions to run him at Ascot, O’Brien said: “The plan is for Paddington to go to Ascot. The lads haven’t decided yet, but it will be either the Champion Stakes or the QEII. My guess at the moment would be the Queen Elizabeth II over a mile. He is probably a miler at heart.”
If he is to bounce back to winning on Champions Day, then we could see him jetted out to America for the lucrative Breeders’ Cup — which is due to take place at Santa Anita in California on 3-4 November.
