Aidan O\u2019Brien has saddled two subsequent Derby winners to land this one-mile contest in the past seven years, with 2018 scorer Anthony Van Dyck claiming Classic glory at Epsom the following season and last year\u2019s winner Benvenuto Cellini bouncing back from disappointment on the Surrey Downs to win the Irish Derby.<\/p>\n
Having chased home highly-regarded stablemate Giant Sequoia on his Curragh debut just over two weeks ago, Oklahoma was a prohibitively priced 30-100 favourite to open his account in County Kerry \u2013 but after being sent straight to the lead by Wayne Lordan, he was unable to resist Paddy Twomey\u2019s 8-1 newcomer City Of Dubai, who finished off strongly under Billy Lee to score a shade cosily by half a length.<\/p>\n
The eyecatcher of the race was Francillon, who came from off the pace to beat Oklahoma to the runner-up spot.<\/p>\n
Of the winner, Twomey said: \u201cHe\u2019s a nice horse. He\u2019s a horse that we\u2019ve had a lot of regard for all year and he just came here ready to run.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought if he did things right he could do what he did and if it went wrong he could finish fourth, that\u2019s exactly what I told the owners this morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a good history in the race and if we can be half as good as some of the previous winners I\u2019d be happy.\u201d<\/p>\n
The trainer expects City Of Dubai to step up in trip in due course, but has no immediate big-race targets.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis mother is by Galileo and he\u2019s by Mehmas \u2013 I think he\u2019ll get a mile and a quarter as a three-year-old,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a big, scopey horse with a staying pedigree. Today was a start and I\u2019d like to take another step, if we can, before I get into anything (big).<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he\u2019s very much a three-year-old so we\u2019ll see how we go.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aidan O\u2019Brien has saddled two subsequent Derby winners to land this one-mile contest in the past seven years,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242439,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[128,130,129],"class_list":["post-242438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}