O’Brien keeping the faith with Storm Boy

Aidan O’Brien was not discouraged by Storm Boy’s beaten effort on his Irish debut in the Weatherbys Ireland Greenlands Stakes at the Curragh on Saturday.

The Justify three-year-old was formerly campaigned in Australia by Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott and was a multiple Group-race winner under that jurisdiction.

Having been shipped to the other side of the world he made his debut for O’Brien at Group Two level, but did not live up to his billing as the 6-4 favourite when coming home last of nine runners.

His trainer was not overly deflated, however, and is glad to have completed a valuable fact-finding mission before Royal Ascot.

“He had never been galloped or worked, but we had to run him to find out what else we had to work on between now and Ascot,” he said.

“We learned that we have a good bit to work on, but I was very happy to do that.

“He was beaten less than six lengths and he got a bad enough check at the two (furlong) marker. You could take another two off that, so he probably would have been beaten less than four lengths.

“That was a very respectable run. I know everyone was disappointed, but we think we’ll take him home now and we’re going to train him.

“We haven’t really trained him yet and hopefully what we think will come, will come.”