Racing: Van in the vanguard

O'Brien sees Ballydoyle clouds lift while Tillerman charts Celebration course

At this time of year, in the second half of the season, racing has trotted out of the tunnel in the guise of the youth team. The emphasis has shifted from proven performance to gilded potential, with the focus increasingly on the youngest generation. As the most expensive horse in the world last year, Van Nistelrooy was under the spotlight before he ever stepped onto a racecourse and, yesterday at the Curragh, the son of Storm Cat, bought for $6.4 million at an auction in Kentucky and now with Aidan O'Brien at Ballydoyle, took another step along the road to justifying his cost by maintaining his unbeaten record in the Group Two Futurity Stakes.

Another member of Team Coolmore, King's Mountain, cut out the pace as Mick Kinane settled Van Nistelrooy behind the leaders and, although the powerful chestnut had only a neck to spare at the line, he did not have to come under severe pressure either to reel in the sole British challenger, the Mark Johnston-trained Wilful, inside the final furlong or to repel Chappel Cresent's late flourish.

Van Nistelrooy, who was easy to back at evens, with punters perhaps worrying about the bout of coughing that has beset the inmates of O'Brien's Co Tipperary fastness recently, will have his fourth and final outing of the season in the Group One National Stakes back at the Co Kildare track next month.

"It was a relief to see him win," said his trainer, "because our two-year-olds have definitely been under a cloud. He was not near full fitness, and Mick said he rode very fresh, but he needed this run if he was going to make the National Stakes."

Van Nistelrooy's performance was enough to keep him at the head of the early market for next year's 2,000 Guineas. But a sky-high price tag is something of a kiss of death as far as Classic success is concerned; witness the recent fates of his erstwhile Ballydoyle comrades Tasmanian Tiger ($6.8 million) and Diaghilev (3.4 million guineas), who were both recently gelded and sold to race in Hong Kong. Van Nistelrooy will not share their destiny, but it may be safe to say that, if he is sure to win on the Rowley Mile next spring, then his namesake is not a Dutchman.

There is plenty of time for other credible candidates to emerge, and one may do so at Deauville this afternoon. The Gerard Butler-trained Elusive City, one of three colts travelling across the Channel to take on three French fillies in the six-furlong Prix Morny, won Goodwood's Richmond Stakes last month in the style of a potentially serious athlete and, if his fiery temperament holds up, he looks sure to take high rank among his contemporaries.

Although O'Brien is unable to muster a candidate for this second two-year-old Group One race of the year ­ he won the first with Spartacus two weeks ago ­ he had encouraging news of his older brigade. "I think they are over the hump, health-wise," he said, "and the good ones are in full work again." Horses such as Rock Of Gibraltar, Hawk Wing, High Chaparral, Sholokhov and Landseer have targets like next month's Irish Champion Stakes, Haydock Sprint Cup, Prix du Moulin and Prix Niel, but the permutations are as yet undecided.

Goodwood's feature yesterday, the Celebration Mile, provided a thrilling, if controversial, finish, with five of the seven runners, headed by Tillerman, within half a length of each other at the line. But the race left a sour taste in the mouth of Terry Mills, owner and trainer of the beaten favourite, Where Or When.

Richard Hughes rode a tactically sound and legitimate race on Tillerman, holding the six-year-old up for his vital late pounce and penning in Where Or When. He got home by a neck from the trailblazing Redback, with Reel Buddy a short-head third and Where Or When and Firebreak dead-heating for fourth inches behind. A stewards' inquiry and an objection from Where Or When's partner, Kevin Darley, had no effect on the result.

The opposing views of victor and vanquished were apparent in the aftermath. "All we wanted was a fair crack at it and we didn't get it," grumbled Mills. "That's raceriding," countered former jockey Mark Perrett, assistant to his wife, Amanda, in the Tillerman camp. "It's what the jockey is paid to do, and he did it well."

At Windsor in the evening, two classy types put themselves on the comeback trail. Hughes steered the veteran stayer Arctic Owl, who missed all of last season because of injury, to his first success for nearly two years and Godolphin's highly regarded Naheef, who beat all bar Hawk Wing in the National Stakes last term but flopped in the 2,000 Guineas and Derby, knuckled down with a will under Frankie Dettori to score a confidence-boosting victory in the Group Three Winter Hill Stakes.