The Tattersalls Guineas weekend at the Curragh was a great advertisement for horse racing with dominant victories by Field Of Gold and Lake Victoria in the Irish 2000 and 1000 Guineas.
Another highly anticipated contest was the Gr1 Tattersalls Gold Cup, and it certainly delivered in terms of spectacle.
Los Angeles (Ryan Moore) heads the field (Pic – Coolmore Stud on FB)
The 2025 renewal featured a high-class field of ten-furlong specialists headed by last year’s Irish Derby winner Los Angeles; 2024 Champion Stakes winner Anmaat; Gr1 Fillies and Mares star Kalpana; and White Birch the defending champ. The big grey was too quick for the top-class Auguste Rodin last year, beating him by three-lengths.
A slowly away stablemate Continuous was rushed around the field to set ideal fractions for Los Angeles who had been settled perfectly on the rails in third by Moore until the field rounded the bend into the straight.
Ryan Moore’s strikingly handsome colt has always had great tenacity, and he needed all of it to repel the late surge of the reappearing Anmaat, who emerged with credit by pushing Aidan O’Brien’s mount to half a length.
Like the returning Champion Stakes winner, Kalpana ran on strongly to be a length further back in third, with fourth-placed White Birch most unlucky having finished best of all.
Last year’s winner of the €500,000 Group 1 was all dressed up with nowhere to go down the inside under Colin Keane as Moore stole a march from the two pole. His job was made a lot harder by the tiring Continuous who had no more to come halfway up the straight.
Keane had elected to ride for luck by following the Oisin Murphy-ridden Kalpana through on the rail, but by the time he got racing room, Los Angeles was gone.
Now a Group 1 winner at two, three and four, Los Angeles’s campaign is being geared around a return to Longchamp for the Arc, in which he was third last year.
“Ryan gave him a brilliant ride,” O’Brien said of the 9-4 favourite, his 11th winner of the race. “He’s a good, hardy, tough horse, and he’s at his best when the pace is on. The second horse came to him, a very high-class horse, and the pace was solid.”
“The plan was to come here, then go to the Prince of Wales’s and have a look at the King George before a little rest and an Arc trial before the Arc,” O’Brien confirmed.
Moore was similarly impressed, suggesting Los Angeles was maturing with age.
“That was the best he has been, and it was a proper horserace, there was no hiding place,” he said. “The second horse is proven at the top level and he put it up to me, but my fellow found plenty.”
Royal Ascot’s Gr1 Prince of Wales’s could see a number of these take each other on again. Jim Crowley and Owen Burrows both said they were delighted with Anmaat and were now looking at the Ascot race.
“It was a heck of a run, the lack of a run just told,” Burrows said. “Put it this way, I look forward to taking him on again now he has a run under his belt.”
George Murphy, son of White Birch’s trainer John, suggested they would also now consider the same race at Ascot, with an eye on the Arc in the autumn as well.
All being well, they’ll get another go in a few weeks’ time at the royal meeting.
