Gitano Hernando could be back for Champion Stakes
Gitano Hernando, the horse who went from breaking the track record at Wolverhampton to winning a Grade One race at Santa Anita, could be back before the end of the season.
The four-year-old, owned by Team Valor and Gary Barber, has not run since finishing sixth in the Dubai World Cup at Meydan in March but he is one of 66 names that appear in a high-class entry for the Group One Emirates Airline Champion Stakes at Newmarket on October 16th.
Marco Botti’s colt stepped up from winning a conditions’ race on the Polytrack at Wolverhampton last September to giving his young trainer the biggest win of his career in the Grade One Goodwood Stakes at Santa Anita the following month with Kieren Fallon in the saddle.
An original plan for a return to Santa Anita, for a crack at the Breeders’ Cup Classic, was shelved in favour of an attempt on the Dubai World Cup and Gitano Hernando had gone into the world’s richest race on the back of a good run at Lingfield Park in February. However, nothing went his way in the World Cup, where he was always stuck in the pack in what turned out to be something of a messy race, and he did well to finish two-and-a-quarter lengths sixth to Gloria de Campeao.
Since then Botti had to scrap a summer programme based around a run in the Eclipse Stakes. “Gitano Hernando had a splint but he’s back in full work now and we’re looking forward to the autumn,” Botti explained. “The horse is doing well so we’ve given him an entry in the Champion Stakes and we’ll see how he comes along. He looks well and he is an athletic horse so he always keeps himself quite fit at home. I’m pleased with him.
“At the moment, nothing is set. There is plenty of time to decide between now and the middle of October. So we’ll see how he progresses before committing him to any target. He’ll probably have a prep race and that is something I’ll discuss with the owners closer to the time. It’s not easy to get a horse fully fit for a race like the Champion after a long lay-off without a prep, but it all depends on how he is in the next few weeks.
“I’ll leave plans in the owners’ hands and we’ll sit down and decide where he goes. It has not quite been decided yet if the Breeders’ Cup is his long-term target, we’ll just see at the moment how he progresses.”
There were plenty of star names in the initial entries for the Champion headed by Harbinger, who is the new star after his emphatic victory in the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot last month. The Champion Stakes has been a good race for fillies and mares in recent years, with six winning since 1990, and the distaff side could be represented by Sariska and Midday.
The Champion is one of the few British Group One races to have eluded Aidan O’Brien thus far but his yard accounts for 11 of the 13 Irish-trained entries, which includes Fame And Glory, Rip Van Winkle and St Nicholas Abbey, who has not been seen on a racecourse since being scratched from the Derby with a muscle problem just days before the race.
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