Christmas Day Upsets Ballysax Stakes, Emerges as New Derby Contender

Christmas Day blew open Leopardstown’s Derby picture with a half-length upset in the P.W. McGrath Memorial Ballysax Stakes, leaving 1/1 favorite Pierre Bonnard back in seventh and another Ballydoyle runner, Endorsement, chasing him home in second.

The Group 3 over 1m2f has long mattered as an early Epsom marker, and Sunday’s running gave it fresh weight. Christmas Day, ridden by Wayne Lordan, came through late in 2:12.76 to beat Endorsement, with A Boy Named Susie third, in a race that drew nine runners and carried a winner’s share of €42,000 from a €70,000 purse. For Aidan O’Brien, the result did more than add another Ballysax win to a record already led by him in the modern era. It changed the way Christmas Day is now viewed.

O’Brien said the colt had been “under the radar,” and the performance showed why that matters. Christmas Day had already won last year’s G3 Eyrefield Stakes, but this was a different level of statement: a winter improver who handled a recognized Derby trial, travelled through a stop-start race, and still found enough to settle matters when the pressure came. O’Brien also described him as smart, straightforward and uncomplicated, then added the key line for any horse entering the Epsom picture: Christmas Day will stay 1½ miles.

That is the detail that lifts him from supporting act to serious contender. Timeform has long viewed the Camelot colt out of Beauly as a horse expected to improve over 1¼ miles and beyond, and the Ballysax result matched that profile. In a spring when several familiar Derby names have already stumbled or shifted off course, a Ballydoyle colt who wins a trial after being overlooked at 11-1 suddenly forces a reshuffle.

Pierre Bonnard’s defeat was the other half of the story. The Derby favorite in the racecard never looked in command and O’Brien said he would “definitely come back for the Derby Trial next month,” a reminder that one race in April does not settle the Classic hierarchy. Even so, the Ballysax has rarely sent a louder signal than it did here. Harzand used it as a springboard to the Epsom Derby in 2016, and Christmas Day has now put himself in that same conversation.