Coolmore is hoping that its top-class European horses will be able to compete in this year’s Spring Racing Carnival in Australia.
Coolmore Australia’s Tom Magnier said Ballydoyle Aidan O’Brien was weighing up Melbourne campaigns for several horses despite uncertainty as to how Covid-19 will affect the international movement of horses, their grooms and riders.
Speaking to RSN927 Radio in Australia this week, Tom Magnier said:
“I was talking to Aidan and we’re mad keen to get the horses down here for the Spring Carnival so hopefully that’s going to happen. We’ve never won a Melbourne Cup so we’re very keen to get one of those.”
Magnier, who oversees the Coolmore operation in Australia, continued:
“We have a very good team at Ballydoyle and Coolmore and we’d love to bring all the staff out but logistically, we’re not sure what is going on at the moment and we’re in talks with the various bodies. If we can get the people and the horses and the jockeys out here, then we will but it’s an unknown at this stage.”
It is believed horses such as the well-travelled Magic Wand, a winner of the McKinnon Stakes in Australia last year, Tattersalls Gold Cup runner-up Sir Dragonet, as well as three-year-old Nobel Prize are possible travellers Down Under, if allowed, with a single shipment of horses from Europe currently booked to arrive in Melbourne in early October.
