Comanche Brave boosts Royal Ascot hopes with Curragh sprint win

Comanche Brave did more than win the Greenlands Stakes at the Curragh; he forced his way into Royal Ascot sprint calculations. The 4-year-old colt, a son of Wootton Bassett, powered two lengths clear of Big Gossey in the Weatherbys Ireland Greenlands Stakes and immediately looked like a horse whose ceiling may now be measured in Group 1 sprints rather than mile races.

The Curragh result mattered because it came against a deep enough six-furlong field to test the theory. Comanche Brave, carrying 9-5 from stall 2 under Ryan Moore, covered the six furlongs on good ground in 1:09.66 and beat a field that included older sprint names such as Montassib, Powerful Glory, Chicago Critic, Valiant Force and Spycatcher. Big Gossey held second, James’s Delight was third and Bucanero Fuerte finished fourth in a race worth EUR130,000, with EUR76,570 going to the winner.

That kind of authority changes the read on Donnacha O’Brien’s placement. Comanche Brave had spent much of last season hovering between seven furlongs and a mile, with a Group 3 placing and other useful efforts, but his last two starts at six furlongs had already been pointing to a different profile. He was third in the Abu Dhabi Gold Cup, third in Riyadh’s 1351 Turf Sprint, then sixth behind Ka Ying Rising in Hong Kong before coming back to Ireland and looking sharper still. This was not a soft landing into a sprint experiment; it was the latest proof that the cut back has unlocked him.

O’Brien’s comments after the race backed up that reading. He said the colt had long looked like a sprinter and wants to go straight to the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes at Royal Ascot, the Group 1 six-furlong race on Saturday, June 20, the final day of the meeting. He also said owner Muhaideb Abdullah A Almuhaideb had bought the horse after the Abu Dhabi run so he could be aimed at Saudi Arabia, then noted that he had another horse for the same owner.

The market caught up fast. Some bookmakers cut Comanche Brave from 33-1 to 16-1 for the Jubilee, while Paddy Power went from 25-1 to 14-1. That is the signal of a horse moving from promising traveler to genuine Ascot threat: not just a colt with pace, but one whose new trip may have revealed the sharpest version of him, and perhaps the one with the highest summer value.