Caravaggio earmarked for The Everest
Unbeaten Irish sprinter Caravaggio has set up a tilt at The Everest in Sydney with his victory in the Commonwealth Cup at Royal Ascot.
Owners Coolmore have a slot in the subscription-based race and the colt is in the front line to contest the $10 million race at Randwick in October.
Trained by Aidan O’Brien, Caravaggio was ridden to his Commonwealth Cup win by Ryan Moore.
“I’m sure the July Cup will be on the agenda, but we won’t race him too much because the new Everest race in Australia has been mentioned,” O’Brien said.
“He’s obviously a brilliant horse. It was only his second run back and we’ve been afraid to do too much because we didn’t want to lose that brilliance that he has.
“Ryan gave him a brilliant ride and his change of pace is unbelievable.
“Ryan was very confident in him, he said he was just going to pop him out and let it happen and that’s exactly what he did, he said he’d come there very late and that’s exactly what he did.
“I don’t think we’ve ever had a quicker horse. It was a big step up from his first run at Naas. We knew it was against three-year-olds today but it will be older horses next time.”
Caravaggio gave punters who took odds-on a scare when he reared in the stalls and was a little slow to begin.
Moore had to get busy on Caravaggio who picked up Harry Angel and went on to win the 1200m-race by three-quarters of a length.