For the third day running, Aidan O’Brien was posing for the photographers in the winner’s enclosure after the big race here on Friday. In a break with the normal routine, however, he had been summoned from the runner-up’s spot to shake the hand of the winning trainer: his 25-year-old son, Donnacha, whose filly Porta Fortuna had just run straight past O’Brien Snr’s Opera Singer in the closing stages of the Group One Coronation Stakes.
Porta Fortuna was Donnacha O’Brien’s first Group One at Royal Ascot and only his second success at the meeting after the same filly’s victory in the Albany Stakes on this card last year, but it was far from being a surprise. She set off as the 7-2 third-favourite, having finished just a head behind the winner in the 1,000 Guineas last month.
It will be truly remarkable, though, if plenty more top-class winners at this meeting do not follow her onto the roll of honour in the years to come. Like Joseph, his older brother, Donnacha O’Brien started to rack up Group One winners pretty much before the ink on his licence was dry and it goes without saying that time is on his side.
“Porta Fortuna is so uncomplicated,” O’Brien said. “Tom [Marquand] gave her a lovely ride. I was happy the whole way and everything went to plan and it’s not too often you can say that.
“All along, she hasn’t got the credit she deserves. She had two runs before Royal Ascot last year and has literally never missed a race since.
“Races like the Falmouth [Stakes at Newmarket next month] might be the plan and the owners are an American group so I’d say an end-of-year plan would be the Breeders’ Cup [at Del Mar].”
The only disappointment on the day for the O’Brien clan was that Joseph, a dual Derby winner aboard horses trained by his father during his relatively brief riding career, could not complete a family treble with one of his three runners on the card.
O’Brien pere was off the mark in the opening race, though it required a fine ride by Ryan Moore and an even better turn of foot from Fairy Godmother to pluck the win in the Albany Stakes from the gaping jaws of defeat.
At least two openings slammed shut in Moore’s face as he tried to pick a path through the middle of the pack, but he still had just enough track left to work with as he tacked out and around the main body of runners, before quickening past Simmering well inside the final furlong for a three-quarter length success.