vallierojas: Claims Five: The Brits who won the Irish Derby

The Queen's Carlton House is favourite to do what no horse from this island has managed in 17 years

Here's a stat for the consideration of anyone who has helped make Carlton House the 11-8 favourite for Sunday's Irish Derby: it is 17 years since the race was won by a horse trained in Britain. You have to go all the way back to a (very dark) time when John Major was prime minister, Wet Wet Wet were No1 and Aidan O'Brien had held his training licence for barley 12 months.

I blame the bloodstock industry and the increasing importance it places on speed, which means winners of the Epsom Derby are these days more likely to be aimed at the Eclipse than the Irish race, in an attempt to prove they can cut it over 10 furlongs as well as 12.

It is certainly not impossible for overseas runners to win the race; three French trainers have won it, one of them twice, since 1995. But the emergence of O'Brien's Ballydoyle yard as a force in top-class races has made it difficult for others to get a look in.

O'Brien has won eight Irish Derbys, including the past five. He has 17 other Irish Classic successes to his name. It is hard, now, to remember a time when British runners would turn up for those races with positive expectations. But such a time did exist. The 1994 Irish Derby was the eighth to be won by a Britain-based horse in nine years. Barry Hills, Michael Stoute, Henry Cecil, Luca Cumani, John Dunlop and Paul Cole all got their names on the roll of honour in that time.

Just to remind ourselves that it can be done, here are the past five horses trained here that went over there and came back with the trophy.

1) Balanchine 1994

It was the first year of Godolphin and Balanchine was the firm's first runner in Ireland when she turned up for the Derby. Trained by Hilal Ibrahim, she had been beaten a short-head in the 1,000 Guineas by Las Meninas and been an impressive Oaks winner, beating Wind In Her Hair by two and a half lengths under a 23-year-old Frankie Dettori, who had never won a British Classic before.

It was not a good year for Irish-trained talent. The sole runner trained on home soil was John Oxx's 40-1 shot Cajarian, who would finish seventh of nine.

Godolphin may have been Sheikh Mohammed's baby but he did not, at this stage, funnel all his best horses into it. King's Theatre, who was runner-up to Erhaab in the Epsom Derby, was trained by Cecil and carried the Sheikh's maroon and white colours. He started the even-money favourite, with Balanchine at 5-1.

Balanchine must have been some horse that day because she never seemed to settle and had pulled her way to the front half a mile from home. King's Theatre had the entire length of the straight to shoot at her but never even looked like pulling level and was four and a half lengths down at the line.

It seemed a major victory for the new idea of having horses spend the winter in Dubai. Balanchine, bought from Robert Sangster for Godolphin the previous year, was among the first horses to have been flown to the Middle East in the autumn, returning to England in the spring. King's Theatre had endured the full blast of an English winter in Newmarket.

These days we are used to the idea that Godolphin horses generally make a slow start to the English season after returning from Dubai but that would have seemed a surprising future in 1994, when it really looked as though Sheikh Mohammed might have revolutionised the game.

Incidentally, Balanchine carried the colours of Sheikh Maktoum al Maktoum at the Curragh. The royal blue silks of Godolphin, so famous now, had no such status at the time and were not invariably carried by their runners.

This great moment for Ibrahim and his filly was to prove a last hurrah for both. The trainer was replaced by Saeed bin Suroor the following year, while Balanchine suffered a serious bout of colic and never won again.

2) Commander In Chief 1993

The Irish Derby is at its best when serving as a decider between the winners of the English and French equivalents, not something that has happened since Sinndar and Holding Court in 2000. But it happened in 1993, when Commander In Chief met Hernando, supplemented the week before at a cost of �75,000. There were nine other runners but they were all 10-1 or bigger.

Hernando had another 14 races ahead of him but his Group One wins were all behind him. He had his chance as Cash Asmussen sent him after Commander In Chief (Pat Eddery) in the final furlong, but he was still three parts of a length short when they reached the line.

"I was cruising two furlongs out but he met a better horse on the day, he took on a tiger," Asmussen said. It seemed at the time as though the Curragh crowd may have seen a race of exceptional quality but Commander In Chief was third in the King George the next month and never ran again, while Hernando became frustrating at the highest level.

3) Generous 1991

Two years before Commander In Chief and Hernando, there was another clash of the English and French Derby winners and there was no doubting the quality of either.

Generous, a bonny chestnut, had pulled five lengths clear of his Epsom rivals, while Suave Dancer had beaten Subotica by four lengths at Chantilly. Given that Subotica would win the 1992 Arc de Triomphe, the French form was stronger, in hindsight.

But Generous was a remorseless galloper at the peak of his powers. Leading for the final mile, he kept on dourly when Suave Dancer closed on him two furlongs out and the other horse was fading close home, trailing by three lengths at the line.

Still, that looked like a brave effort from the runner-up when Generous hacked up by seven lengths in the King George a few weeks later. Paul Cole's horse was hailed as the horse of a generation.

Alas, he was stuffed in the Arc that year, his first race for more than two months, trailing home nine lengths behind the winner ... Suave Dancer. The Racing Post ran a caption competition of Cole and a couple of others standing around Generous, laying hands on him and looking concerned. The pleasingly surreal winning entry had the trainer saying: "If we stick his head back on this way, I'm sure no one will notice."

4) Salsabil 1990

Salsabil was the first filly to win the Irish Derby since Gallinaria 90 years before and she beat a proper field. Against her were the first and second from Epsom ? Quest For Fame and Blue Stag ? as well as Belmez, who had beaten Quest For Fame in the Chester Vase.

But punters had plenty of faith in Salsabil following her wins in the 1,000 Guineas and the Oaks, and sent her off at 11-4, making her second-favourite, even after a late drift.

Her supporters would have had few worries through the race, in which she was the last to come off the bridle. Quest For Fame and Belmez were being pushed along off the home turn, though it took Salsabil a fair time to work her way past Deploy, who may have set a steady pace.

The form worked out. Belmez won the King George, a neck in front of Old Vic, of whom more in a moment. Quest For Fame won a Grade One in America and was twice third in the Breeders' Cup Turf. Salsabil won another Group One, the Vermeille, but fared no better than Generous when it came to the Arc.

5) Old Vic 1989

In an ordinary year, Old Vic would have been an obvious contender for the Epsom Derby, having been an easy winner of the Sandown Classic Trial and the Chester Vase. But he was owned by Sheikh Mohammed, whose brother, Sheikh Hamdan, had the brilliant Nashwan, for whom the Derby was marked.

So Old Vic went over to Chantilly and made almost all to win by seven lengths in the French equivalent, three days before Nashwan hosed up at Epsom. Then, since Nashwan was being aimed at the Eclipse and then the King George, Old Vic was free to plunder the Irish Derby.

This really wasn't much of a contest, even though Old Vic had an abscess on his back, right under the saddle area, that his trainer, Cecil, described as twice the size of a golf ball. "I had to use foam pads with a hole cut out to enable him to take part," the trainer recalled recently, after the horse had died of colic at the age of 25.

The abscess didn't stop him pulling four lengths clear of Observation Post and Ile De Nisky, giving British raiders a 1-2-3. More significantly, this race made his jockey, Steve Cauthen, the first to have ridden the winners of the world's four major Derbys, in England, Ireland, France and Kentucky.

Chris Cook

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