We must all tip our hats to cham­pi­on train­er John O'Brien for his won­der­ful prepa­ra­tion of the NL­CB East­er Guineas win­ner War of Words and for lead­ing in an un­prece­dent­ed 1-2-3 on East­er Mon­day- NL­CB Day at the Races. This was at San­ta Rosa Park in Ari­ma.

O'Brien land­ed his fourth suc­cess in the pres­ti­gious Grade One event when Patrick Hus­bands pushed War of Words past for­mer cham­pi­on and lead­ing rid­er Emile Ram­sam­my aboard Pot of Gold to win go­ing away by 1 3/4 lengths. That en­sure that there would be on­ly one horse with "Triple Crown" as­pi­ra­tion and that equine star is War Of Words.

O'Brien went in­to the his­to­ry books by be­com­ing the first train­er to lead in a 1-2-3 in the Guineas as sta­ble­mates Pot of Gold and Prince Ze­shan fol­lowed War of Words home.

The lead­ing train­er at the cen­tralised venue showed just why he is the cham­pi­on train­er in T&T by sad­dling two win­ners on the 10-race card.

Not on­ly did O'Brien land the fea­ture in the 61st run­ning of the first jew­el of lo­cal rac­ing's "Triple Crown" but he sad­dled an im­pres­sive first time scor­er in the open­ing event Crime of Pas­sion with Bri­an Boodram­s­ing aboard. This capped off the ex­cit­ing day.

Mendez must be con­grat­u­lat­ed for his fan­tas­tic train­ing feat in bring­ing a horse which is es­sen­tial­ly a stay­er to win the Guineas as a maid­en. War of Words kept the record of maid­en win­ners go­ing af­ter Un­ques­tion­able start­ed it in 2012 for train­er Shaf­fick Khan and own­er Hugh Lee King, the pres­i­dent of the Ari­ma Race Club.

How­ev­er, the per­for­mance forces tur­fites to re­mem­ber the leg­endary Er­ic 'Colt' Du­rant. War of Words was al­ways held in high es­teem and was ex­pect­ed to be very good, once he be­gan to go around two turns and though he nev­er had a 'prep' race over an ad­e­quate dis­tance, O'Brien had him trained to the minute and his 'gal­lops form' when he raced over 1,000 me­tres in 1:02.00 sec­onds, showed that the cham­pi­on train­er is one of the best con­di­tion­ers in the busi­ness.

War of Words gave Hus­bands no wor­ry and had a per­fect trip ac­cord­ing to the jock­ey. His on­ly con­cern was hit­ting the front to ear­ly.

O'Brien had War of Words and Pot of Gold in im­mac­u­late con­di­tion but it took the skill of Hus­bands to con­quer Ram­sam­my. Had it been any­one else rid­ing War of Words the re­sult may have been dif­fer­ent.

War of Words was pro­duced with great tim­ing and that did the trick. Many pun­ters cheered when Ram­sam­my took over and raced in­to a clear lead with 500 me­tres left but O'Brien knew why he brought Hus­bands to part­ner War of Words. He need­ed to bring a jock­ey to beat Ram­sam­my and the plan worked.

Hus­bands had the An­tho­ny Wight owned horse War of Words in mid­field in mid-pack be­hind Ram­sam­my, who had lot of horse un­der him and pounced on the long time leader Prince Ze­shan but Hus­bands was wise to the move and cruised through the field, look­ing omi­nous.

The re­sult is known by all now but con­grat­u­la­tions are in or­der for O'Brien who showed his class once again and Wight, who won his first grad­ed stakes.

?