Zahrann produced a tremendous display to regain the winning thread and lead home a Johnny Murtagh one-two in the Newbridge Silverware Royal Whip Stakes at the Curragh.<\/p>\n
Impressive when winning twice earlier in the season, he missed out on a hat-trick when narrowly denied by Ralph Beckett’s Amiloc in the King Edward VII Stakes at Royal Ascot.<\/p>\n
Despite the defeat, he left the Royal meeting with his reputation firmly enhanced, and as such was sent off 2-1 second-favourite behind Aidan O’Brien’s odds-on market leader Los Angeles in his quest to get back to winning ways in this Group Three event.<\/p>\n
It was Murtagh’s 300-1 outsider Tangapour who led the field into the final quarter-mile, but when Zahrann’s jockey Ben Coen asked his mount to bravely squeeze up his stablemate’s inner to make his winning run, he found a willing ally who displayed a race-winning turn of foot close home.<\/p>\n
He finished two-lengths clear of Tangapour who in turn tenaciously held off Joseph O’Brien’s Galen for second, with Los Angeles unable to land a telling blow in fourth.<\/p>\n
And having passed this stern examination of his credentials, Murtagh is now excited to test Zahrann in Group One company, as he sets his sights on a run in the Royal Bahrain Irish Champion Stakes on 13 September.<\/p>\n
Murtagh said: “We wanted to see where we stood today. Ben went the brave man’s route today, got the gap and he quickened up.<\/p>\n
“I haven’t spoken to anybody yet, but hopefully we’ll be able to go for the Irish Champion. Today was the test.<\/p>\n
“It looked in Ascot like he was a little bit slow, but I think a strong mile and a quarter should suit him around Leopardstown. He has to improve again, but he might.<\/p>\n
“He’s a very relaxed horse that doesn’t show much at home and is learning on the job. He’s a typical Aga Khan horse and reminds me a bit of Sinndar that when he clicks into gear someday, he might realise how good he is.<\/p>\n
“He’s still underdeveloped and I think he could be a really nice four-year-old.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zahrann produced a tremendous display to regain the winning thread and lead home a Johnny Murtagh one-two in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72070,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[3004,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-72069","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\/72069","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=72069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}