Confucius powers clear at Naas to land maiden by 3¾ lengths

Confucius did not just win at Naas, he announced himself as one of the sharper 2-year-olds in Ballydoyle’s pipeline. The 1.7 million gns Tattersalls October Book 1 purchase, a son of No Nay Never out of Cheveley Park Stakes winner Millisle, powered clear in the Matchbook El Clásico £100 Moneyback Special Irish EBF Maiden over 5f 205y on good ground, turning a narrow debut defeat at The Curragh last month into a 3¾-length statement.

The shape of the race mattered as much as the margin. Confucius broke well, went to the front early, was briefly joined after a furlong and then lengthened away when asked a furlong from home. He clocked 1:09.91, a time that underlined how much more was in the performance than the finishing margin alone. Alaskan Bear chased him home in second, with Bull Shark another 3¾ lengths back in third, while the rest of the field never laid a glove on the leader once he quickened.

That clock matters because it places the performance in a sharper competitive frame than a routine maiden win. Confucius was faster than Albert Einstein’s winning time in the same race last year, and that is the kind of comparison that gets noticed in a Ballydoyle juvenile season packed with expensive, well-bred colts. It also moved him into a more meaningful bracket: No Nay Never’s 13th TDN Rising Star, following Great Barrier Reef as the sire’s 12th only two weeks earlier at The Curragh. For a stallion already associated with top-flight juveniles such as Little Big Bear, Charles Darwin and Ten Sovereigns, the sequence strengthens the sense that his best two-year-olds keep arriving in waves.

Coolmore’s Chris Armstrong did not sound like a man talking about a one-day winner. He said Confucius “looks a ready made Ascot two-year-old” and added, “I’d say he’s probably one for the Coventry now.” That is the key takeaway from Naas: the colt’s rebound from debut also exposed the temperament that matters when the level rises. He settled, travelled, and responded when asked, which is the profile Ballydoyle wants before Royal Ascot.

The pedigree only sharpens the case. Millisle was a Group 1 winner in the 2019 Cheveley Park Stakes and is a half-sister to stakes performers including Gino Severini, so Confucius already had class on paper. Now he has backed it up on the track, and Aidan O’Brien’s record in this Naas maiden gives the result extra weight too, with Johannes Brahms, Van Beethoven, Siskin and Albert Einstein all having won it before him.