A Royal Ascot hat-trick? Sole Power's bid | Irish Sun
AT EIGHT, Sole Power is difficult to train. He’s harder to ride. He’s coltish. He’s ‘full of the joys of spring’ and absolutely gunning for a third Kings’s Stand Stakes win at Royal Ascot.Sabena Power’s star spearheads a crack Group 1 team for trainer Eddie Lynam, who describes last year’s meeting as the “week of a lifetime”, but feels happy with both him and last year’s Queen Mary winner Anthem Alexander as the clock runs down.
“It was the week of a lifetime,” he said. “We’ll probably never do it again. It was great for Sole Power to win back-to-back Kings’s Stands Stakes and for Sabena to breed and own the one that won the Golden Jubilee on Saturday, Slade Power, was brilliant.”
He added: “Sole Power was after winning the Palace House Stakes and was in a good place going to Ascot, but it’s hard to win there any year. To go back and win that race a second time was incredible, I think it’s 80 years since it that was last done and he was probably more impressive the second time.”
There has been a change in Sole Power since that win. He’s won an unprecedented second Coolmore Nunthorpe Stakes and followed that up with the Ipic-sponsored Al Quoz Sprint in Dubai to take his Group 1 tally to five.
Lynam thinks it might just be going to the son of Kyllachy’s head.
“In the last three months he’s probably got a bit more difficult to train,” he explained. “He’s getting more full of himself. I don’t know did someone told him how good he is or something, but he’s definitely getting a little bit more boisterous and he’d be a harder ride in the mornings now than he used to be.
"He was always tricky, but he’s really full of the joys of spring and still in very good form, which is hard to believe given he’s eight. He acts like he’s two or three, he’s very happy.
“It’s only a few months ago that he won a Group 1 in Dubai, he’s an unbelievable horse and we’re very lucky to have him.”
Anthem Alexander signalled her own good form with Group 3 victory on her return to action at Naas at the turn of the month and is now bound for a third clash with the mighty Tiggy Wiggy in Saturday’s Commonwealth Cup - a brand new race for three-year-old sprinters. Though it isn’t that old rival that Lynam picks out as her chief rival.
He said: “It’s a very good race. You have the American horse Hootenannny, Twiggy Wiggy, Henry Candy’s horse Limato, Willie Haggas’s horse Adaay, and I personally think Hugo Palmer’s horse Home Of The Brave [not New Providence] has a good chance in it - he’s by Starspandgledbanner as well [like Anthem Alexander.”
But how is Lynam’s contender going? Will owner Noel O’Callaghan be in the winner’s enclosure at the Royal meeting for a second successive year?
“Anthem Alexander is very well after winning at Naas,” the trainer said. “I was glad to get the run into her because she was getting fed up, as we all were waiting to get a run. She won well, it was a good performance.
“She’s a course winner [at Ascot], she has won her trial well, Pat [Smullen, jockey] was very happy with her, I’m very happy with her and there’s only one Royal Ascot so we’ll give it a go.”
Lynam’s other star mare Agnes Stewart will not be on the team. The Meath trainer made the decision early last week to keep the three-year-old off the boat after running out of time to get the John Smith’s May Hill Stakes heroine ready.
He said: “Agnes Stewart got a setback really at the wrong time. She was three-quarters fit and injured her back. It was at the end of March, the day before the World Cup meeting and I was in Dubai.
“Yes, she’s in full work now and we’re on our way back, but we’re not ready and one thing I know about Royal Ascot is if you’re not ready don’t go there. I hope to have her out in July.”
The big guns are completed by newcomer Moviesta, who joined Lynam’s yard from that of Bryan Smart in April. The five-year-old, part-owned by former QPR boss Harry Redknapp, is a Group 2 winner with top handicap form, but has failed to win for almost two years.
Lynam said: “Moviesta arrived with us in April and we’ve had a race against time to get him fit, but we’ve done a couple of racecourse gallops and he’s pleasing us.
“I’m leaning towards running him on Saturday in the Golden Jubilee Stakes. If he’s good enough to win a race at Royal Ascot it would have to be over six furlongs in that race, we don’t think he’s fast enough for the five in the Kings’s Stand.
A change of scenery often snaps a horse back into life, that was probably his owners’ thinking, and it could be working.
Lynam adds: “In fairness he is a Group 2 winner, albeit a couple of years ago. He was an unlucky loser in the Prix de l’Abbaye last October too.
“He’d have to run probably 10lb above his best to win a race like that on a giving year, but we think he’s working well.”
Sole Power was the horse that took Lynam to the top of his game. He has trained in Dunshaughlin for more than 30 years, but it took until 2010 for the plucky speedster to land him his first Group 1 win in York’s Nunthorpe Stakes.
Time and again since, Lynam has proven that was no fluke; this is a team that can find and release greatness. But Lynam, always good-humoured and eloquent, reckons he’s not getting as much out of it as he should be.
“You do enjoy them, but unfortunately not as much as you should,” he said. “It’s because you stress yourself out with these good horses and I know I’ll look back in a few years and say, ‘God, I wish I still had them’.
“We’ve more horses all round than we’ve had in a long time with 58 in the yard and we’ve also got about 30-odd unlaced two-year-olds to go to battle with. We can keep dreaming if nothing else.”
First published in the Irish Sun on Monday, June 15
