“Before he won the Irish 2,000 Guineas, Johnny was saying to me, ‘This fellow won’t come off the bridle in the Irish Guineas’. I said, ‘Johnny, it’s very hard to say that’. He said he didn’t care, ‘If they go slow, he will outsprint them; if they go fast, he’ll outstay them’.
“It’s very hard to be that confident and I was a bit wary. It’s Johnny’s first year here and you didn’t know if maybe Johnny wasn’t seeing the full picture. But Johnny was right. I don’t think people realise how easy he won at The Curragh. Over a mile, he’s the best we have had.”
What about Rock Of Gibraltar, winner of seven consecutive Group Ones, and Giant’s Causeway, the iron horse himself? “I know,” says O’Brien, “but this fellow is quicker than they were and I don’t think the move up to 10 furlongs would bother Henry in the slightest. He can go to sleep in his races, wake up when he needs to and produce that killer kick, which makes it difficult for any other horse. If we keep doing a proper job with him, he will show himself to be an exceptional horse.”
