Pacemaker upsets St Nicholas Abbey and Aidan O'Brien

Sign up to our free sport newsletter for all the latest news on everything from cycling to boxing Sign up to our free sport email for all the latest news Sign up to our free sport email for all the latest news SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Young Joseph of the latter ilk may have given Camelot an inch-perfect ride to take the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket on Saturday, but two days later at the Curragh he for once seemed to get the fractions wrong on one of the Ballydoyle older stars, St Nicholas Abbey. The seven-year-old, who has only a maiden success five years ago to his name, has earned his corn at Ballydoyle for the past two seasons as pacemaker, a role he admirably fulfilled for So You Think in the same race, the 10-furlong Group Three Mooresbridge Stakes, 12 months previously, for miler Excelebration at the Co Kildare track last month and which he took on again yesterday with another hare, Robin Hood. St Nicholas Abbey, winner of last year's Breeders' Cup Turf and second in the Sheema Classic at the end of March, was warming up for next month's Coronation Cup at Epsom. "We know St Nicholas Abbey isn't a heavy-ground horse," said Aidan O'Brien, trainer of the first two and father of the runner-up's rider, "and he'd had a break after Dubai, and on his first run back we didn't want to murder him, just see how he was coping with the ground and go through the gears gently and let him find himself.