With six Group winners last weekend, four at the top level, it’s small wonder that Galileo has regained his status this week as the world’s number one stallion on TRC Global Rankings.
The Coolmore titan had been top of the pile for much of the existence of the rankings, but he lost the top spot to Dubawi two years ago and has been struggling to keep up ever since. At one time earlier this campaign, he had fallen more than 20 points adrift of his Godolphin rival.
Suggestions that his powers are on the wane are clearly wide of the mark at the moment, however. He has been clawing his way closer to Dubawi since the European season got properly underway in June, and last weekend it was just like the Galileo of old as his progeny mopped up 40 percent of the ten G1s run in Europe, Magical taking the Irish Champion for Aidan O’Brien, Shale the Moyglare Stud Stakes for son Donnacha, Search For A Song the Irish St Leger for Dermot Weld and Mogul the Grand Prix de Paris for Aidan.
Shale and Mogul are new G1 scorers, meaning this sire extraordinaire, already the world record holder, now has 88 individual Group and Grade 1 winners to his name.
And you can add to that the G2 Prix Foy win of Anthony Van Dyck at ParisLongchamp and the G3 victory of Tiger Moth at Leopardstown, plus the G1 efforts of Peaceful (second in the Matron at Leopardstown), Armory (third to Magical) and Wembley (second in the National Stakes at the Curragh).
It all adds up to a nine-point gain, enough to edge Galileo one ahead of Dubawi. He had already reclaimed top spot in the turf-only standings, and is now 13 points clear in that particular classification.
Yet this a battle with plenty of life left in it. Dubawi had to make do with just one Group winner last week - Indigo Girl in the G2 May Hill at Doncaster for George Strawbridge, John Gosden and Frankie Dettori - but he has plenty of ammunition for an autumn fightback, headed by beaten Irish Champion favourite Ghaiyyath, who is certainly not finished for the season.
In a way, the superb duel at Leopardstown between Magical and the Godolphin 5-year-old (whose dam, Nightime, is a Classic-winning daughter of Galileo) was emblematic of the situation with their two sires in the rarified air at the top of the standings, well beyond the reach of all other current stallions. Dubawi, courtesy largely of a superior strike rate (see the IV column in the stats), had taken control of the classification in recent times, but Galileo has kept plugging away, and the momentum started to shift his way in the last couple of months.
Galileo's G1 wins in 2020
Galileo's Group/Graded wins by years since 2011
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In much the same way, Ghaiyyath has become regarded as the world’s outstanding performer in most quarters. Indeed, the latest Longines World’s Best Racehorse figures have him on 130 - 4lbs clear of any other runner anywhere in the world - and he is probably destined to remain in the top spot when the Longines titles are handed out early in the new year, even if he does nothing else of note. He has certainly been impressive in three G1 victories this year, and the 130 came from his powerful three-length win (over Magical and other classy G1 performers) in the Juddmonte International at York last month.
Magical had had a fine 2020 too, two easy G1 wins in Ireland (taking her overall tally to six) before that runner-up slot at York. But the Ballydoyle team have been consistent in their insistence that she is better than ever this year, and jockey Seamie Heffernan decided before Saturday’s race that different tactics - racing at Ghaiyyath’s quarters and not allowing him all his own way up front - might give her a better chance of showing that.
Heffernan was right, of course, as the video shows, but ironically the handicappers have it down as her worst performance of the year, even though it looked for all the world like a lifetime high. Racing Post Ratings, for instance, have it as only the 12th best effort of her career. Ghaiyyath, too, is generally reckoned to have been below par. He produced just the seventh best RPR of his career, fully 9lbs below York. Yet jockey William Buick said afterwards, “It all kind of went to plan. He was racing in exactly the same rhythm to what he would do normally.”
The problem for the handicappers in reality was the presence in third, just 1¼ lengths behind Ghaiyyath, of 66/1 Ballydoyle outsider Armory, an effort so much better than anything else he has achieved (he had G1 winners Sottsass and Japan behind him) that they were almost obliged to devalue the form of a fabulous horserace in which the leaders were always exposed and those held back always likely to get flatteringly close at the end.
Ghaiyyath, of course, is still the handicappers’#1, and he may well justify that later this campaign, just as his sire may topple Galileo once more, but the TRC Global Horse Rankings will have none of it for now. The algorithm has deducted a few points from Ghaiyyath and added a few for Magical, meaning that the former has dropped to fourth in the world standings (from second), and the mare is now up to third (behind Enable and Maximum Security).
Enable’s status is unchallenged for the moment, but serious contenders to wrestle that world-end #1 honour away from her - chief among them Maximum Security, Magical, Ghaiyyath, Love, Tiz The Law, Authentic and Contrail - are queuing up. It will be fascinating to see how it plays out.
Joseph O’Brien now a top-ten trainer
A run of success for Galileo is typically accompanied by a surge in the trainers’ standings for Aidan O’Brien, and sure enough the Ballydoyle maestro receives a handsome four-point gain in the latest update. But more notable are the rises for his sons, Joseph and Donnacha.
Joseph, already with a Melbourne Cup, a Breeders’ Cup and an Irish Derby on his training resume, added a Doncaster St Leger (with Galileo Chrome, ironically a son of Australia) and a National Stakes (with new 2000 Guineas favourite Thunder Moon), a G1 double that moves him into the world top ten for the first time.
Some sections of the media were writing about rivalry between the brothers after a weekend in which Donnacha landed a G1 (already his third) with Shale in the Moyglare Stud Stakes, but such talk is ridiculously premature. Donnacha has obviously made a spectacular start to his training career, and Shale’s win helped him to a seven-point week-on-week gain. But, even after that, he is world-ranked 192. He will undoubtedly climb far higher - but let’s leave such comparisons until he does.
Harrington the world’s top female trainer
The O’Briens weren’t the only Irish to make an impact on the TRC Global Rankings over Champions Weekend. The riders battling it out at the top of the Irish championship, Shane Foley and Colin Keane, fared particularly well.
Keane rode four winners at the festival, including Champers Elysees, a first G1 triumph for trainer Johnny Murtagh, in the Matron, and Foley was on two G2 scorers for Jessica Harrington.
Read more on horseracingplanet.com.
Harrington climbs to world #18 as a result, meaning she is now the highest-ranked female trainer on the planet, one of only four in the TRC top 100 (Western Australia’s Alana Williams is #24 with her training-partner husband Grant; Sydney-based Gai Waterhouse is #29 with her training partner, Adrian Bott; Germany’s Sarah Steinberg is #82).