The five-year-old son of American multiple Grade One winner Quality Road will be making a maiden trip Stateside for the historic mile-and-a-quarter contest, which is now held at Colonial Downs.<\/p>\n
Cairo \u2013 who was behind only then-stablemate Paddington in the Irish 2,000 Guineas when trained by Aidan O\u2019Brien \u2013 was best of the rest at 100-1 as Docklands narrowly defeated Rosallion in the Queen Anne Stakes at the Royal meeting.<\/p>\n
Having already faced high-calibre fields this season, Cairo will add to that list by taking on 2024 Kentucky Derby winner Mystik Dan in Virginia.<\/p>\n
\u201cGoing into Royal Ascot, I did feel the horse was as well as we\u2019ve ever had him,\u201d Haynes told her yard sponsor, Coral.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was absolutely flying at home so I had high hopes he would run a big race, but even so, to finish third in a field of that quality did surprise me, in the best possible way obviously!<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d always thought that coming to America would suit him, and having discussed it with the owner, going into Ascot we very much had it in our minds.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe still needed to run a big race at Ascot to make the trip viable, but of course he produced that big run.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe team from Colonial Downs were at the track that day and chatting to them after the Queen Anne really did make up our mind to come here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Haynes has now set her sights on rewarding her stable star, who arrived in New York last week before an eight-hour journey to Virginia, with a couple of lucrative races in the United States before returning home.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s an old pro now when it comes to travelling, so he\u2019s taken it all in his stride and acclimatised well,\u201d Haynes added.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe temperature is cooler than it was here last week apparently so while it\u2019s still warm, it\u2019s more comfortable for him now.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had a couple of canters on the dirt when he first got here and his latest piece of work has been on the turf, under his big-race pilot Ben Curtis.<\/p>\n
\u201cBen actually contacted us when he saw we were running the horse over here and I think he will be a really good fit for the horse.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s obviously got plenty of experience riding European horses, but he\u2019s been in America long enough now to have the local knowledge as well, which I think could be really important in a race like this.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re under no illusions about the task we face though, and realistically, finishing in the first three would be a tremendous achievement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe plan after this weekend is to send him down to Keeneland to be based with Ed Vaughan and aim him at a richly-endowed race at Kentucky Downs.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is just so exciting to be involved in a big international race like this, it really is what we have worked so hard to achieve.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The five-year-old son of American multiple Grade One winner Quality Road will be making a maiden trip Stateside…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48554,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[3004,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-48553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-racing","tag-racing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}