ARCADIA, Calif. – The Singapore Turf Club announced this week that two Group 1, seven-figure international turf races that were fixtures on the May calendar have been discontinued.
The Singapore Airlines International Cup at 1 1/4 miles, which was worth $3.95 million this year, and the Krisflyer International Sprint at six furlongs, worth $1.31 million, will no longer be run. The Singapore International Cup was first run in 2000, and the Sprint began a year later.
Port Douglas, a 14-1 outsider, gave trainer Aidan O’Brien his 15th career win in the $132,732 Beresford Stakes for 2-year-olds at The Curragh in Ireland on Sunday.
The win left O’Brien tied with the late Vincent O’Brien, who is no relation to Aidan, for most wins in the Group 2 race by a trainer. Aidan O’Brien, 45, won his first Beresford Stakes in 1996 with Johan Cruyff.
Promising Run, a Kentucky-bred filly by Hard Spun, won her stakes debut Friday in the Group 2 Rockfel Stakes for 2-year-old fillies at Newmarket Racecourse in England.
Owned by Sheikh Mohammed’s Godolphin Racing, Promising Run earned a fees-paid berth to the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf at Keeneland on Oct. 30 with the win in the seven-furlong Rockfel. Of more immediate interest to trainer Saeed Bin Suroor is a start Oct. 9 in the Group 1 Fillies’ Mile at Newmarket.
Saturday is 2-year-old day at Newmarket in England, with three group stakes – two Group 1’s and a Groups 2 – carded for the juvenile set.
It’s the Group 2 Royal Lodge Stakes that’s a Breeders’ Cup Challenge Win and You’re In race, offering an automatic fees-paid berth in the BC Juvenile Turf as well as travel expenses to the race at Keeneland. Wrote, who was third in the 2011 Royal Lodge, came back to win the BC Juvenile Turf in 2011 at Churchill Downs.
Aidan O’Brien and Coolmore won both Group 1 races for 2-year-olds Sunday at The Curragh, including a sweep of the first three places in the Moyglare Stud Stakes for fillies.
But the Moyglare Stud winner came as a surprise, as Minding, an 8-1 shot in North American betting, pushed past heavily favored Ballydoyle to win by three-quarters of a length. Alice Springs finished another half-length back in third.
A great day of racing overseas was marred Saturday by controversial results in the St. Leger Stakes at Doncaster in England and in the Irish Champion Stakes at Leopardstown.
The filly Simple Verse was disqualified from first to second and Bondi Beach declared winner in the St. Leger after two bumping incidents late in the 1 3/4-mile race. But in the Irish Champion, heavily favored Golden Horn’s number stayed up despite the fact the winner came out and bumped hard the eventual third-place finisher Free Eagle.
The day after a tremendous Irish Champions card at Leopardstown, there is more high-class racing in Ireland on Sunday at The Curragh, which hosts a pair of important 2-year-old races as well as the Irish St. Leger.
The National Stakes for 2-year-old colts and fillies and the Moyglare Stud Stakes for 2-year-old fillies both are Group 1 races that are part of the Breeders’ Cup Win and You’re In program, the National linked to the BC Juvenile Turf and the Moyglare Stud to the BC Juvenile Fillies Turf.
Almost nothing went right in 2014 for the super mare Treve until she won the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe for the second time last fall, but so far this year, as Treve bids to become the first three-time Arc winner, everything has gone right. The season-long plan laid out by her connections makes a stop Sunday at Longchamp, where Treve has her final start before the Arc de Triomphe in the Group 1 Prix Vermeille, one of three Arc de Triomphe preps on an outstanding card that also includes the Group 1 Prix du Moulin de Longchamp over one mile.
