Precise powers past True Love to win Irish 1,000 Guineas
Precise answered her Newmarket defeat with a 2½-length Curragh rout of True Love, and Aidan O’Brien now has another Classic filly heading toward Epsom.
Precise did more than win the Irish 1,000 Guineas at the Curragh. She reshuffled Ballydoyle’s filly pecking order, erased the memory of her distant seventh at Newmarket and did it in a way that pointed straight to bigger targets this summer.
In Sunday’s €500,000 Tattersalls Irish 1,000 Guineas, with a winner’s penalty value of €285,000, Precise settled well, travelled with authority under Wayne Lordan and put the race to bed from two out. She was drawn 7, carried 9st 2lb and stopped the clock in 1:36.98, beating True Love by 2½ lengths in a 12-runner renewal that had been billed as a Ballydoyle showdown. True Love, ridden by Ryan Moore, appeared well placed on the rail before Precise swept past and kept going clear.
The result mattered because the race had been set up as a return engagement after Newmarket, where Precise was a long way behind True Love. At the Curragh, the form flipped emphatically. Precise handled the pressure, the step back into top-company company and the race shape better than her stablemate, and that is what made the performance feel like a recalibration rather than a routine Classic result. Thoroughbred Daily News described it as a dramatic turnaround from Newmarket, and the way Precise won suggested there could be more to come.
Horse Racing Ireland said O’Brien called the win “special” because Precise is a homebred. It was also her third career Group 1 success, another marker of quality for a filly by Starspangledbanner out of Way To My Heart. The Curragh had framed the race as a showdown between Precise and True Love, and the script ended with Precise delivering the cleaner, stronger finish on the bigger stage.
For Wayne Lordan, it was another significant mile Classic on a resume that already includes a first Group 1 win aboard Sole Power in the 2010 Nunthorpe Stakes and a move into Aidan O’Brien’s Ballydoyle yard in January 2017. For O’Brien, it completed an English-French-Irish 1,000 Guineas sweep in 2026 and reinforced the depth of his fillies’ division. If Precise takes the next step, the Irish Guineas will be remembered as the day she stopped being a Newmarket also-ran and started looking like an Epsom filly.
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