Opera Singer gets season started in Irish 1000 Guineas

At one point it appeared Opera Singer would have her 2-year-old finale in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf. The filly, in the end, never got on a plane carrying European horses to Santa Anita and instead makes her 3-year-old debut Sunday at The Curragh in the Irish 1000 Guineas.

Ryan Moore will be aboard Opera Singer, the favorite as of Friday to provide trainer Aidan O’Brien his 11th win in the Irish classic.

Opera Singer, by Justify, got the seasoning she needed finishing eighth in career debut last June, won second time out, and improved through all five starts during her 2-year-old campaign. Rather than at Santa Anita, 2023 racing ended for Opera Singer at Longchamp, where she rolled to a five-length win in the Group 1 Prix Marcel-Boussac.

Opera Singer did nor begin her season in the 1000 Guineas at Newmarket, where O’Brien sent out Ylang Ylang to a fifth-place finish, but maybe Opera Singer wasn’t quite ready for that May 5 race. Instead, she races one mile Sunday around one mild right-handed bend over a course that on Friday was rated “good.”

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It's fair to ask the “who’d she beat” question of Opera Singer’s victory in the Boussac. Runner-up Rose Bloom has finished seventh and ninth in her two 2024 starts, while Boussac third-place finisher Les Pavots went to Santa Anita and was 11th in the BC Juvenile Fillies Turf, then was a poor fifth in a listed stakes in her lone start this year. Darnation came home 14th in the English 1000 Guineas, her lone start since a fifth-place Boussac showing, leaving Ribaltagaia, fourth in the Boussac, the only one among the top five in that race with a subsequent win. Hers came in a $24,000 listed race in which she faced six rivals.

Fallen Angel, winner of the Group 1 Moyglare Stud last September, was Opera Singer’s equal as a 2-year-old and was not awful in the English 1000 Guineas, checking in eighth of 16 after tracking the pace. Maybe she hasn’t trained on at age 3, but she easily could rebound at The Curragh. And Vespertillo, second to Fallen Angle in the Moyglare Stud, returned this year with a third-place finish, beaten just a half-length, in the French 1000 Guineas.

Tattersalls Gold Cup

Auguste Rodin, winner of the Epsom and Irish Derbies and the Breeders’ Cup Turf last year, is an odds-on favorite for the Group 1 Tattersalls Gold Cup, also on the Sunday program at The Curragh.

A short price is no guarantee of success when it comes to Auguste Rodin: He was 9-4 as he served as the caboose facing nine rivals last July in the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes, and on March 30 at Meydan, Auguste Rodin, the 11-8 favorite in England, beat none of his 11 rivals. You might add to this list, as well, the English 2000 Guineas last year, where Auguste Rodin was 12th at 13-8, though very soft going at Newmarket at least provided a plausible excuse.

It was hard to find a ready one for the Sheema Classic, contested over a flat, left-turning track larger but not dissimilar to the one Auguste Rodin had mastered in California. The colt simply did not show up on the night. If he has his fastball Sunday, he’ll win the 1 1/4-mile Gold Cup.

Second and third choices Friday in betting with English bookmakers were a pair of horses who can only win if Auguste Rodin turns in a subpar performance. White Birch already has raced twice this year, winning both the Gold Cup preps at The Curragh, but at least as interesting is Elegant Man.

A lightly raced American-bred 4-year-old son of Arrogate, Elegant Man has raced exclusively on the all-weather circuit and makes his grass debut in his fifth start. The only horse to beat him is Rebel’s Romance, who won the 2022 Breeders’ Cup Turf and the Sheema Classic earlier this year, and Elegant Man gave 10 pounds to a capable horse, Penzance, and handed him a 1 1/2-length defeat in a rich handicap March 29 at Newcastle. Elegant Man has plenty of pace and high-level ability. How those characteristics can be expressed facing a horse the likes of Auguste Rodin over a vast grass course rather than a cozy all-weather track remains to be seen.

* In France on Sunday, the fabulous filly Blue Rose Cen is set to make her 4-year-old bow facing males in the Group 1 Prix d'Ispahan. During her 2023 season, Blue Rose Cen won the French 2000 Guineas, the French Oaks, and, to cap her campaign, the Prix de l'Opera, all Group 1 races. Her chief rival in this 1 1/8-mile contest is the 5-year-old mare Mqse de Sevigne, a two-time Group 1 winner last summer in France who already has a race this spring, a useful victory over the esteemed 9-year-old gelding Skaletti.

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