Doug O’Neill has reportedly been a cool customer all week at Pimlico, and it is not just because he has been to the Maryland racecourse previously and won the Preakness Stakes.
Four years ago, O’Neill came to Pimlico with I’ll Have Another after the colt won the Kentucky Derby. I’ll Have Another held on gamely in the final 100 metres to land the second leg of the US Triple Crown from old rival Bodemeister before he suffered a career-ending setback on the threshold of greatness.
The night before the Belmont Stakes, I’ll Have Another was ruled out with a tendon injury.
It is those experiences that help shape a man, and the setback has helped him become more relaxed. In the early hours of Sunday morning, O’Neill bids to win the second leg of the American Triple Crown once again with Nyquist, who powered to an impressive victory at Churchill Downs two weeks ago to take his flawless record to eight wins.
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Nyquist has trained perfectly since he arrived two days after his Kentucky Derby triumph and will be only O’Neill’s third runner in the race.
On the surface, O’Neill has approached Preakness week without a care in the world, but the fact that the 47-year-old trainer has chosen to stay in the same hotel as four years ago hints that he still relies on the comfort blanket of superstition.
Ask him, however, and he is not letting on.
O’Neill has trained great horses in the past. Lava Man won seven Group 1 races in two seasons earlier this century. Goldencents was fifth in the Preakness in 2013 but became a dual Breeders’ Cup winner. But has he ever been so confident going in to a top-level horse race?
“Never,” he said in a teleconference. “I feel like I’m doing something wrong but I never thought I’d ever say it, and I was blessed to be around a horse as good as Lava Man, but this — Nyquist is just so unique and he just gives off a vibe like no other.
“So he’s the best horse I’ve ever been blessed to be around. He’s just a special gift.”
Like I’ll Have Another, Nyquist is owned by Paul Reddam and will be ridden by Mario Gutierrez. The team had hoped to be drawn wide outside the speed, but instead the son of Uncle Mo will break under his Mexican rider from gate three of 11. Lani, the UAE Derby winner who was ninth in the Kentucky Derby, will emerge from gate six with Yutake Take on board to become the first Japanese runner in the $US1.5 million (Dh5.51m) race.
Nyquist has shown in the past that he is one of the most versatile horses in training, and Gutierrez should have the speed underneath him to secure early a position from which he can win.
It is just a year after American Pharoah sliced through the Triple Crown to become the first horse to achieve the three-peat since Affirmed in 1978, who followed up Seattle Slew’s Triple Crown triumph the previous season.
O’Neill has tried his best to downplay talk of back-to-back Triple Crowns, but there is the suspicion it is to not come across as arrogant, rather than what he really feels in private.
“We don’t have many superstitions, but the one thing Paul [Reddam] has taught me is never to say, ‘See you in the winner’s circle’ or ‘we can’t get beat’,” he said. “That always seems like the kiss of death. We’re just very optimistic that he’s going to be tough to beat on Preakness day.”
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