Equinties - Lockinge Saturday

Gm Equinauts

The Ballydoyle juggernaut is hitting new gears right now and we might have seen the Chesham winner yesterday in ITALY:

We cannot WAIT for Royal Ascot!

Let’s dive in.

HEADLINE ROUND UP

WORRIES

Before we start this section, we must put a disclaimer in. This is all, ultimately, hypothetical because we don’t know what has truly happened.
However, we should discuss KYPRIOS and what happened to the Gold Cup winner yesterday.

All seemed well at around 19.27pm yesterday. KYPRIOS duly obliged in the Levmoss Stakes under Ryan Moore at odds of 1/14, and it all looked like he would be on the path to the Gold Cup at Royal Ascot.

That was, until, he gave connections a scare in the paddock after ‘The Lads’ posed for a post-race photo.

The eight-time Group 1 winner walked away from the winners’ enclosure rather gingerly, though all seemed well when he first entered the Leopardstown winners’ circle.

Aidan O’Brien then spoke to Gary O’Brien in front of the Racing TV cameras, and he suggested that he may have sprung a shoe, meaning the shoe has bent or twisted away from the hoof, which can lead to lameness signs. He also said that if it wasn’t that, it could be “something else”, which would raise serious concerns.

We’ll know more about this over the next few days, but we really hope he is okay, obviously. He’s seven, he’s had his issues, and he owes connections nothing.

If he doesn’t make it to the Gold Cup at Ascot, that would throw the weak division wide open. JAN BRUEGHEL, third at the Curragh on his reappearance last year, is strong in the market, as is the recent Chester winner ILLINOIS. Ballydoyle have super subs to bring in if they need, so they are okay.

TRAWLERMAN chased home KYPRIOS last year, so if he is in the same form, he’d have to be a strong consideration, and depending on how he runs off such a long break today, could COURAGE MON AMI be back?

Or, looking at yesterday’s action, could SWEET WILLIAM be one at 12/1? He will come on for yesterday, but he ran a big, big race behind the globetrotter REBEL’S ROMANCE. He was third in the Gold Cup last year, and he stayed on through the line.

Let’s hope KYPRIOS is all okay, another Gold Cup for him is what he deserves.

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