RACING:FRANKEL MAY be the headline act for day one of Royal Ascot but Power is rated a 3-1 favourite to give trainer Aidan O'Brien a record-breaking victory in tomorrow's St James's Palace Stakes.
O’Brien is chasing a seventh success in the three-year-old mile highlight, which would place him alone in the St James’s Palace roll of honour, ahead of the legendary 19th century trainer Mathew Dawson, who also won the race on six occasions.
The prestige of the Group One race has risen hugely since then and Power is attempting to become the fifth O’Brien runner to add the St James’s Palace to the Irish 2,000 Guineas.
Black Minnaloushe, Rock Of Gibraltar, Henrythenavigator and Mastercraftsman all completed the Curragh-Ascot double. Giants Causeway and Excellent Art were the other two O’Brien-trained winners.
Power will renew rivalry with a number of horses that finished behind him at the Curragh after 16 runners were left in the St James’s Palace at yesterday’s final declaration.
They include John Oxx’s Born To Sea, French hope Hermival and Foxtrot Romeo who was runner-up in the Irish Guineas. O’Brien will also run Breeders Cup winner Wrote in the race.
Power was the sixth O’Brien-trained winner of the Coventry Stakes last year and Ballydoyle’s Navan winner Cristoforo Colombo is scrapping with Jim Bolger’s Dawn Approach for favouritism in tomorrow’s race.
Victory would set a positive tone for the rest of the week for Ireland’s champion trainer who had six winners in 2008 – four of them in Group Ones – and who has first-rate chances with Fame And Glory (Gold Cup), So You Think (Prince Of Wales’s Stakes) and Homecoming Queen (Coronation Stakes.)
Paddy Power clipped the Irishman’s odds further to 4/7 for the festival’s leading trainer award.
O’Brien gives Excelebration a fifth crack at Frankel in the Queen Anne Stakes, while other Irish interest on the first day will include Sole Power, who is reunited with Johnny Murtagh in the Kings Stand Stakes.
Ground conditions at the track yesterday were good to soft.
Wednesday’s Group One feature will be the Prince Of Wales’s Stakes, where So You Think is ante-post favourite to reverse course form in last season’s Champion Stakes with the French star Cirrus Des Aigles.
The latter showed his liking for the Berkshire track when winning last year’s Champion Stakes and enjoyed a fine start to this season, landing the Dubai Sheema Classic and the Prix Ganay on his return to Europe.
He did, however, suffer a narrow defeat to Golden Lilac in last month’s Prix d’Ispahan, and trainer Corine Barande-Barbe is now considering the next target.
The two options are the 10-furlong Group One at the royal meeting or the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud next Sunday.
“We have not decided yet. I am going to make a final decision in the morning before declaration time for the Prince of Wales’s Stakes,” said the trainer yesterday. “I am waiting to see the forecast and want to know the definitive list of runners. I believe So You Think is going to run. We’ll see.”
