Aidan O'Brien's Australia tantalises as Flat season jumps into unknown

2,000 Guineas hope Toormore with Richard Hannon, the trainer who could have the whip hand over Aidan O'Brien in 2014. Photograph: Alan Crowhurst/Getty Images

From Sandown via Punchestown to Newmarket and Chester, the transition from jumping to the Flat over the next two weeks will be all but seamless. There are no fewer than 12 Grade One National Hunt contests at Punchestown's festival meeting between Tuesday and Saturday, when the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket will be the first Group One of the British Flat season, and it can be difficult to stop and reflect when there is always so much to anticipate.

The 2013-2014 jumps campaign did not leave a long sequence of images etched on the memory as some have done in recent years, though the afternoon at Towcester in early November when Tony McCoy rode the 4,000th winner of his career stands out as a moment when racing, and a fair proportion of the general public too, paused to appreciate one of the truly extraordinary sporting careers.

Nor could it have had a more emblematic horse of the year than Sire De Grugy, who received the majority of votes in an online poll conducted by the Racing Post to beat a field which included Quevega, who beat Golden Miller's record of five straight wins at the Festival when she took the Mares' Hurdle for the sixth year in a row.

Sire De Grugy had a Zelig-like ability to be there at the season's pivotal moments. First, he emerged as the winner when Sprinter Sacre pulled up on his first, and as it turned out only, start of the season at Kempton on 27 December. Then, 24 hours after the death of Our Conor in the Champion Hurdle had cast a long shadow over the first day at Cheltenham, his victory in the Queen Mother Champion Chase was one that everyone could celebrate. The weighing room cleared to acknowledge Jamie Moore's first Festival winner, and the mood of the entire meeting was changed in an instant.

Sire De Grugy's victory in Saturday's Celebration Chase at Sandown was his fourth Grade One in a season which seemed to promise little more than a string of second places behind Sprinter Sacre at its outset. Paul Nicholls and Nicky Henderson dominated the trainers' championship, while Willie Mullins made it a three-cornered fight at the festivals, but Sire De Grugy and Pineau De Re, who took the Grand National for Dr Richard Newland's tiny 12-horse yard, were the sort of horses and stories that fire the enthusiasm of many National Hunt fans in the first place.

Flat racing, meanwhile, now offers the prospect of four Classics and Royal Ascot in the space of eight weeks. Technically, of course, the 2014 turf season is already more than a month old, with both the Craven and Greenham meetings in the book, but it is Guineas weekend, rather than the Craven, which feels ever more like the point at which the campaign really starts.

The 2,000 Guineas in particular looks like an outstanding and fascinating renewal, both in terms of its horses and its people. Kingman, Kingston Hill and Toormore are all unbeaten, while Australia – by a Derby winner out of an Oaks winner – has, like a fair few before him, been described by Aidan O'Brien as possibly the best he has trained.

A personal view is that Australia is the key horse in the field, because he is priced on a mixture of hope and hype with surprisingly little in the book to back it up, and that seems to feed into other markets too. He might be a better horse than Galileo, George Washington, High Chaparral and company, but he still has a huge amount to prove.

O'Brien won the first four Classics in 2012 but still could not beat John Gosden – who saddled two Group One winners all season – to the trainers' championship. Yet he is joint-favourite for the title with Richard Hannon, who has taken over from his father Richard Hannon Sr, the champion in three of the last four seasons.

With the strings in the major yards increasing all the time, it becomes ever more difficult even for a trainer of O'Brien's immense talent to take the title with just a handful of Group winners. Hannon sends Toormore to the Guineas with a live chance and has several top-class older horses plus, above all, a weight of numbers that no other yard can match. He remains odds-against at 11-8 for the trainers' title, a bet that can provide a regular interest throughout the season with every prospect of a payout at the end.

Ryan Moore, meanwhile, also looks big at evens in what is surely a two-runner race with Richard Hughes for the jockeys' title. Hughes was less than 20 winners clear last time around and his injury in Dubai has given Moore a head-start of similar proportions this time. Moore is riding as reliably and impeccably as ever, and also makes plenty of appeal at the prices to finish the Flat season as champion once again