Aidan O’Brien is still effusive in his praise of Albert Einstein as the highly-touted colt moves into his three-year-old career.
Unbeaten in two starts as a juvenile, an injury forced him to miss Royal Ascot and he never made it back to the track last season.
Despite training several other Group-winning two-year-olds last season, O’Brien is still in no doubt that Albert Einstein is best in class, with his only question mark being how far he will stay.
“It’s been wet, we haven’t been held up with them but we have had to be careful not to overdo them on the bad ground,” said O’Brien.
“All the main horses, everything has gone well for them. From the Guineas horses the number one at the moment is Albert, he’s done very well physically. He’s big and powerful and very rapid.
“We won’t know if he’s going to get the mile until we do it. The stride people, the heart people, the pedigree people, everyone says that he will get a mile, but he’s a very quick thinker.
“He’s rapid to do anything, he’s quick to leave the stalls and very quick into his stride. We’re not going know and we’re not going to search to find out because we don’t want to wake him up too much.
“We’re going to train him asleep and see what’s going to happen.”
Albert Einstein is part of a trio of horses earmarked for editions of the 2000 Guineas run in England, Ireland and France.
“The other horse is Puerto Rico and the other horse after that is Gstaad, and we all know what he’s done,” O’Brien continued.
“At the moment the three of them are being trained for the Guineas, I’d imagine one of them will go to France and then hopefully come back to the Curragh.
“With the way the ground is at the moment, I’d imagine they’d all go straight there. Listening to the lads, I think two will go to Newmarket and one will go to France and then the Curragh – I think that’s what they’re thinking.
“Albert is the main horse. When we started working him in the spring of his two-year-old career we thought all the two-year-olds were no good and we thought he was the only horse we had.
“He was that much above everything else, it was unusual. He had his two runs and won his maiden very easily, it was a six-furlong race and he was keen enough, he was rapid through the race and the second (Power Blue) won a Group One after.
“Then he had the mishap, he doesn’t look big but he’s powerful, he’s wide and strong.”
