Williams Buys into Coolmore Cup Hopefuls

Lloyd Williams, winner of four G1 Melbourne Cups as an owner in Australia, has bought into Coolmore’s G1 St Leger hero Bondi Beach (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}), G1 Irish St leger winner Order of St George (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}) and G1 Ascot Gold Cup second-place finisher Kingfisher (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}), along with his son Nick.

All three will enter quarantine this week, but trainer Aidan O’Brien has not made a final decision regarding his trio of hopefuls for the Flemington contest, held Nov. 3. Although O’Brien revealed that Bondi Beach, and Kingfisher were the more likely to make the trip to Australia.

“Lloyd is a legend in his own lifetime,” commented trainer O’Brien, after hearing the news. “We feel very privileged to have horses to train for him. The three of them are possibles for the Melbourne Cup, obviously. They have to go into quarantine with us on Tuesday and they’ll possibly go in anyway. It’s looking very possible that Bondi Beach and Kingfisher will go and we have to make a final decision on Order Of St George. “It’s a very prestigious race and obviously a very hard race to win. Not many races stop a nation.”

Though O’Brien has not had a Melbourne Cup runner in since 2008, he did send out Adelaide (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}) to lift the G1 Cox Plate in 2014.