Aidan O’Brien will pass £4.5m in prize-money for the 2017 season if Roly Poly (3.35) wins the Falmouth Stakes at Newmarket on Friday, and will also register his 11th Group One success of the year, an remarkable total when you consider that the success of Alice Springs in the same race last year was O’Brien’s sixth of the campaign. John Gosden, his closest pursuer, has yet to pass £2m in prize money in Britain this year, and has landed only a single Group 1 success.
It is turning into another record-breaking season for O’Brien, and while Roly Poly is not the best filly ever to pass through O’Brien’s hands – that honour could well belong to Minding, the seven-time Group One winner whose retirement due to injury was announced on Thursday evening – the form of her second place behind Winter in the Coronation Stakes at Royal Ascot would probably be enough to get her home today.
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