'Misfit' Big Gossey bags Gladness glory Trainer Charles O’Brien bridged a gap of eight years between wins at Stakes level today, as his Curragh-specialist and ‘misfit’ Big Gossey (7/1) was the appropriate winner of the Listed Lester Piggott Gladness Stakes. Seven of the eight-year-old’s nine previous wins had come at the Curragh and today’s hot race featured last season’s Group 1-winning juvenile Camille Pissarro, along with 115-rated UK runner Poet Master and six other rivals. Big Gossey, under Billy Lee, raced with the pace and while challenged from two furlongs out, finished well to hold Camille Pissarro by a half-length. O’Brien, with his first Stakes winner since the 2017 Munster Oaks, revealed “initially when Big Gossey arrived in the door, I didn’t think he’d ever be doing this. He is by Gutaifan, has no pedigree of any description, is a box walker, a cribber and a horrible horse to deal with in the stable, but that’s the way it works!” He added “I thought today’s seventh furlong might just find him out, and I think if it had been over six furlongs he’d have won easier: Billy said he was just hanging on. “We knew he was fit and being an eight-year-old on that ground against three-year-olds, it doesn’t matter how much weight they are getting. It’s very hard for younger horses to take on a battle-hardened one like him. “Gary O’Brien, who leads him up, does 90% of the work with him. The horse doesn’t need a lot of work but Gary does different things to keep him happy.” Today’s race is run in memory of late great Lester Piggott, whom O’Brien’s father Vincent O’Brien famously employed as his stable jockey. Quotes from Alan Magee
