Marten Julian’s Weekly Roundup 27 May 2025

Last Sunday at the Curragh could prove to have been one of the most pivotal days in Aidan O’Brien’s season.

Of course, a weekend seldom passes in Ireland without a representative from Ballydoyle making an impression, but the reason why Sunday may prove so significant is that he trained three Group winners who are quite possibly going to be at the top of their respective generations.

Albert Einstein, who won the Group 3 Marble Hill Stakes, looks likely to be the yard’s main representative for the Coventry Stakes, Irish 1,000 Guineas winner Lake Victoria promises to be the yard’s best three-year-old of either gender while Los Angeles is expected to tackle the Prince Of Wales’s Stakes, the King George and then another crack at the Arc.

It would not surprise me if these three horses, between them, were to win ten or more Group or Grade 1s before the end of the year.

Of the three I want to single out Lake Victoria, who could be exceptional.

Her achievements last year were already remarkable … to win three Group and Grade 1s, the first of them over seven furlongs, then to drop down to six before stepping up to a mile for the Breeders’ Cup – and all in the space of just over six weeks – reflects a tenacity seldom seen in a two-year-old at that level.

Given O’Brien’s record in his handling of top-class fillies over the years he would have been aware that Lake Victoria had these qualities some time earlier.

He has set some of his top-class fillies very exacting programmes in the past and has said the key is to recognise that potential at an early stage.

I first heard him speak on the subject in 2007, in reference to a filly named Peeping Fawn. This daughter of Danehill was unraced at two and ran three times in April, beaten in maidens, before winning at Naas in May.

She was then bumped up to Group 1 company, running third in the Irish Guineas and then five days later finishing a good second in the Oaks. She then won her next four starts, all Group 1s, over a period of seven weeks.

As for Lake Victoria, to do what she did last year was extraordinary and O’Brien will want to show her up in the lights for the world to see.

We don’t yet know how far she will stay – she has a three-parts brother who won over hurdles – but there are grounds for believing from her pedigree and manner of racing that she will get ten furlongs.

She probably runs next in the Coronation Stakes but then he may want to prove her against the males and try for the Juddmonte or the Irish Champion Stakes, with an end-of-term target at Del Mar in the Breeders’ Cup. Then they have the option of keeping her in training as a four-year-old.

I cannot recall a filly in recent times that has her tenacity, talent and temperament.

I do not expect her to be beaten again.

Bye for now

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