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Free Eagle is primed as Dermot Weld hunts another international major

03/12/2015

Dermot Weld is one of racing’s internationalists, a pioneer of the global arena, so much so that neither his multiple champion trainer titles nor his 15 Irish Classic wins receive quite the share of the spotlight they unquestionably deserve. Those domestic achievements alone are worthy of prominence, in anyone’s book, but in Weld’s case they are more often the backstory, the sub-plot to a wider narrative.

In October 1989, the master of Rosewell House boarded Go And Go on to a plane destined for Maryland. The two-year-old rewarded his trainer with victory in the G2 Laurel Futurity. Nine months later, the chestnut colt returned stateside and rocked world horseracing’s status quo, brushing aside the Kentucky Derby hero, Unbridled, then sweeping past Thirty Six Red and storming away with the G1 Belmont Stakes. In doing so, the Be My Guest three-year-old became the first and only European-trained winner of a US Triple Crown race.

Weld is good at “firsts”. His most famous came three years later. Vintage Crop was dispatched from the Curragh on a long haul to Melbourne and returned with Australia’s most famous Cup (Weld would capture a second with Media Puzzle in 2002).

Between times, Weld laid claim to another first; one that, at the time, would not have registered on the same scale as a Belmont or a Melbourne Cup, but which now holds altogether greater significance. In December, 1991 Additional Risk won the Hong Kong Invitation Bowl.

Twelve months earlier, Weld had been among the first trainers from outside Asia to send representation to the infant Hong Kong International Races. His contender was Milieu, last of 13 in the Invitation Cup, the forerunner to today’s LONGINES Hong Kong Cup.

“The first runner I had in Hong Kong was at the international race day in 1990,” recalls Weld. “I thought it was an exciting thing to do and was happy to support the meeting because I had been to Hong Kong myself and knew a lot about the racing there.”

With that experience behind him, a year later Weld sent Prudent Manner and Additional Risk, the latter owned, like Go And Go, by the late Walter Haeffner’s Moyglare Stud.

Prudent Manner ran second to Hong Kong legend River Verdon in the Invitation Cup. Additional Risk made history. Mick Kinane, decked in Moyglare’s famous black and white silks, topped with red cap, settled the Ahonoora three-year-old at the tail of the field, swung wide into the stretch and drove his mount to success in that inaugural Bowl, the precursor to the LONGINES Hong Kong Mile. That victory sets Additional Risk apart as the first European-trained winner on Hong Kong soil. 

“Hong Kong is a big part of the internationalisation of horseracing and that is something I recognised early on,” says Weld. “When I first visited Hong Kong, it was obvious the racing was only going to go one way.”

The Hong Kong International Races have advanced far since 1991. Today the two races are four, worth a combined purse of HK$83 million. The richest and most prestigious is the LONGINES Hong Kong Cup, the world’s most lucrative 2000m turf race with a prize pool of HK$25 million.

On Sunday, 13 December, Weld will return to Sha Tin with another talented Moyglare Stud colt, Free Eagle. The lightly-raced four-year-old has held his own with Europe’s finest in the past year or so and achieved a career peak with victory in the G1 Prince Of Wales’s Stakes (2000m) at Royal Ascot in June.  

Weld’s two representatives at the HKIR since 1991 have failed to fire - Diamonds Galore was last but one in the (April) 1993 Bowl and Agnetha beat only three of her rivals in the 2002 Hong Kong Sprint. The form book and the eye say that Free Eagle is a superior athlete to any of Weld’s previous Hong Kong raiders and the trainer is hopeful of returning with spoils.

“The plan is to run in the Hong Kong Cup. I am very happy with Free Eagle - he is training nicely,” he says. “He is a horse with a lot of pace. If you look at the Irish Champion Stakes when he was beaten by Golden Horn in a controversial race, you see how easily he travelled into the race. He was cantering off the home turn.

“He showed that speed when he won the Prince Of Wales’s Stakes at Royal Ascot and I think a mile and a quarter is his optimum trip.

“We are looking forward to running him because you want to see good horses competing in these prestigious international races.”

Weld is an old hand at international raids, yet outside of Europe it is more than seven years since his latest triumph, with Winchester in the 2008 G1 Secretariat Stakes at Arlington Park. A quarter of a century on from his vanguard global successes, Free Eagle could provide an overdue addendum to the tale of the Irishman’s global exploits.

 

 

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