Magical Champion Stakes For Ballydoyle And Galileo

Magical (4f Galileo - Halfway To Heaven, by Pivotal) led home an incredible 1-2-3 for Ballydoyle in Saturday’s Irish Champion Stakes at Leopardstown.

The Aidan O’Brien-trained filly was highly-fancied to capture her third top-level success, having chased home the likes of Enable and Crystal Ocean on her three previous starts, while she started the season with a hat-trick of Group victories. She led from the two furlong pole under Ryan Moore and raced home strongly to win by two and a quarter lengths as Magic Wand (Galileo) beat stablemate Anthony Van Dyke (Galileo) a head for second.

A delighted Aidan O’Brien commented after the race, “She's a very exciting filly. The plan was to go to the Arc from here but usually what happens is we see how they come out of it, talk to the lads and they see if they stay on the program or go a different way. It's something great to have to think about.”

Bred by Orpendale, Chelston and Wynatt, Magical was gaining her eighth career success overall, with seven of those coming at pattern level, and took her earnings past the €2.5million mark for Coolmore partners. She is a full-sister to multiple Group 1 winner Rhododendron (Galileo), out of another top-class racemare in Halfway To Heaven.

Galileo was completing a four-timer on the first day of Irish Champions Weekend, with Blissful (Galileo) having won the Listed opener, Mogul (Galileo) landed the Group 2 Champion Juvenile Stakes (Galileo), and Norway (Galileo) brought up a treble in the Group 3 mile and a half contest.