Requisition

There is a chance that Requisition may be under-rated after winning the Listed Loughbrown Stakes at The Curragh on Sunday as he was the Ballydoyle second string after Nephrite, and Nephrite just appeared to need the race, or perhaps not quite get home over the trip on the ground. It would be folly to overlook this performance though. Requisition was well backed, even against his odds-on stable companion, and this wasn’t completely unexpected.

The son of Invincible Spirit won well, he had to do a lot of running to get to the front, and he was hassled there by the free-running Tough As Nails, but he battled on really well to hold Coolnagree (who had travelled easily to the two-furlong pole) at bay with Nephrite back in third. The winning time was good, faster than the time that the admittedly largely unextended Excelebration clocked in winning the Gladness Stakes over the same course and distance a half an hour later, and he raced up the stands rail, which may not have been the fastest part of the track (so far this season the stands rail hasn’t appeared to confer the advantage that it traditionally has).

Aidan O’Brien’s colt stays well, he won over eight and a half furlongs at Galway, a stiff track, in the summer, and he proved here that he handles cut in the ground well. He is out of Saoire, a Pivotal mare who won the Irish Guineas, whose only other offspring to race thus far won over a stiff mile at two as well. There has to be every chance that Requisition can better this run when he steps back up to a mile, especially on easy ground, and he may well get even further than a mile in due course. He is interesting.

22nd April 2012