It risks tempting fate but for once next Saturday’s Qipco Champion Stakes at Ascot might do what it says on the tin.
Aidan O’Brien’s call to give the all but priceless Delacroix a final career start before going to stud sets up a rare tripartite clash of superpower talents that also includes Godolphin’s Ombudsman and the French star Calandagan.
An apparently even rarer weather “omega block” looks like providing unusually decent ground conditions and contributes to a British Champions Day scenario that lives up to its billing as a championship climax.
All too often since it began in 2011, the official culmination of the British flat racing season has turned into a damp squib on going closer to Cheltenham in March rather than prime summer fare.
RM Block
However, the going at Ascot on Sunday was good on the round course and there’s a mostly dry outlook for the week ahead.
With Ombudsman kept in reserve for the Champion Stakes, and Calandagan unable to run in the Arc because he’s a gelding, the addition of Delacroix shapes as providing a proper championship decider.
Last Thursday the latest Longines World Thoroughbred Rankings compiled by the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities had Ombudsman rated the best racehorse on the planet on an official rating of 128.
Just behind him on 127 are the Arc hero Daryz, Japan’s Forever Young and the Kentucky Derby winner Sovereignty. Field Of Gold, who is on target to line up in Saturday’s Queen Elizabeth II Stakes, is also on 127.
But of the top dozen rated horses in the world, six are European-based and three of those look like taking each other on in the Champion Stakes.
The King George winner Calandagan (125) was runner-up in the race a year ago and will try to continue the run of success enjoyed by the Aga Khan farms team. No breeding considerations surround him, but the very opposite is true of Delacroix, with Coolmore pinning so much to the son of Dubawi.
The death of Wootten Bassett puts even more of a premium on the colt as an outcross for Coolmore’s huge depth of Galileo bloodlines. But the team have opted to give him one more whirl of the racecourse dice before beginning a lucrative new career.
“We’re going to run Delacroix in the Champion Stakes,” O’Brien said at the weekend.
“The lads [Coolmore owners] want to do it. He’s very good and if everything is well that’s where we’ll go. The lads wanted to race Delacroix and they love racing. They had to be happy with him and make the decision. We are grateful and delighted about that,” he added.
It supplies a “rubber match” too between Ombudsman and Delacroix. O’Brien’s star edged the verdict in July’s Eclipse at Sandown but had to settle for second to the older horse in the following month’s Juddmonte International at York.
The Champion Stakes hasn’t been a happy hunting ground for O’Brien over the years, with Magical his sole success in 2019. In contrast the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes has fallen to the Irishman four times, the last time with Minding in 2016.
The Lion In Winter has been nominated as his most likely hope for the mile highlight, where Field Of Gold is due to return to action for the first time since being beaten in Goodwood’s Sussex Stakes.
“The plan is to run the Lion In The Winter in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes. He has been good since his last run in France [third in the Prix Du Moulin] and everything looks good with him,” said O’Brien, who plans to supplement the Leger third Stay True into the Long Distance Cup.
There has been evidence this season of a little needle between O’Brien and John Gosden, who trains both Ombudsman and Field Of Gold.
Leopardstown’s Champion Stakes was robbed of a clash between Ombudsman and Delacroix, with Gosden pointedly declaring that Ombudsman wouldn’t “appreciate running against multiple entries from one stable on a track with a short straight”. O’Brien in turn memorably directed a “John likes to whinge” barb towards the Englishman.
“The ground looks like it could be on the fast side, which is really unusual,” Gosden commented in advance of next weekend’s action. “I think for the first Champions Day in 2011 it was that ground and since then it’s been rather bottomless. We won’t be on the inner turf track as they like to call it this year.”
Inevitably, Monday’s Roscommon action is rather less stellar, but it gives Forlio a chance for quick follow-up in the concluding handicap.
A wind procedure paid off handsomely at Navan last Wednesday as Paul Flynn’s charge won by five lengths. He carries a 7lb penalty now – less than he’s officially been raised for future contests – and has Colin Keane on his back.
