The Times

20 June 2026

There are many great things about Venetian Sun but the best of them is her backside. It’s big and beautiful and as she stood in the winner’s circle you could you could see her name lovingly stencilled on to her gleaming bay coat. It has also propelled her to £390,000 of glory by winning the Commonwealth Cup.

She only got home by a head from the 50-1 shot Spicy Marg who cost a fifth of her £250,000 at the sales, but  Venetian Sun and her connections were important examples that there are plenty more big players in the game than the ever-wonderful Moore, Coolmore and O’Brien whose all-time Ascot successes went to 101 for O’Brien and 97 for Moore when Precise outgunned Touleen and her stable mate True Love in the featured Coronation Stakes.

Venetian Sun  is trained by Karl Burke whose Middleham base is now as powerful as its Wensleydale location is drop dead beautiful to the eye. Clifford Lee has survived a life threatening bike accident to confirm his excellence in the top flight and owner Tony Bloom, who also has the champion chaser has made his fortunes by cool decisions and it was inevitable that his team now include Patrick Veitch, the maths prodigy who took £30m off the bookies whom branded him “Enemy Number One.”

But all these people depended on that backside. Venetian Sun has an elegant front end that you would never imagine her anything approaching a heavy lady. But while the super talented Bow Echo draws just 450 kilos on the weighbridge, she spins it round to a full 490. That what propels her 6 furlongs in 72.08,  so now let’s think about her head.

At around about 10 am yesterday morning hundreds of thousands of ITV would have drooled as Venetian Sun’s head rested in her the arms of her young Lincolnshire born groom Michaela Adams arms. Sprinting 1200 metres up the Ascot straight is about as explosive a task as any in the book. It can blow their mind. Venetian Sun is rock solid. Let’s follow her while we can.

The same applies in spades to the Billy Loughnane, George Boughey, Bow Echo partnership who struck again when Libertango justified the £400,000 spent  by Boughey for Turkish chemical giant Ibrahim Araci at the Breeze Up Sales this spring to weave through traffic and outrun the odds-on O’Brien/Moore favourite Sun Goddess in the opening Albany Stakes.

Central to Aidan O’Brien’s genius is the infinite capacity for taking pains, terror of complacency. “The moment you do that, you are finished,” he says. He was triumphant again yesterday but his words were not wrong. His son Joseph later won the Sandringham with Green Carrera and join father on five wins at the meeting. Competition even comes from within.