Doubts over stable form for Sir Michael Stoute
A field of just eight possible contenders for the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot on Saturday would seem to be distilled to a match.
And an in-house match at that.
Twelve months ago Sir Michael Stoute took three horses to the race and Conduit, Tartan Bearer and Ask filled the first three places.
This time the third of his trio of runners, Confront, might be pushed to play a part in a similar hegemony and his more realistic task in the drama will be to play the role of pacemaker. Owned by Prince Khalid Abdullah, Confront is likely to be setting the gallop for the prince’s other runner in the race, the derby winner Workforce, and if he is to be confronted by a challenge in the final furlong then the markets suggest that will come from the third Stoute-trained runner in the race, Harbinger.
Workforce is the obvious untapped potential of the race. A seven-length winner at Epsom last month in a record time on only the third start of his life, he attempts to become the first three-year-old, since Alamshar in 2003, to win Ascot's mid-summer showpiece. Harbinger, who is unbeaten in three runs this season, was a winner of the Group Two Hardwicke Stakes at Royal Ascot and a few have even questioned the decision of Stoute’s stable jockey, Ryan Moore, to pick Workforce in preference to Harbinger.
However, any harbinger who was looking at the immediate future of Stoute’s equine workforce might have doubts about the form of the stable. A return of just three winners from the 45 runners sent out from the champion trainer’s yard to British racecourses since the beginning of July hardly augurs well.
And there has been a knock-on effect for Moore in his battle with Paul Hanagan for this year’s jockeys’ championship. Hanagan reached the century mark when he won the first race at Ayr to put him 15 clear of the defending title holder.
But, with six beaten favourites in the past two weeks and only one winner in his last 30 runners the form of the Stoute stable has to be a concern, except for those plotting his downfall.
Aidan O'Brien has won the King George three times with Galileo (2001), Dylan Thomas (2007) and Duke Of Marmalade (2008) and had changed tack from recent years, where he has relied on his older division by keeping a pair of three-year-olds in the race with Cape Blanco, the winner of the Irish Derby, potentially joined by At First Sight, who was runner-up to Workforce at Epsom.
John Gosden's Dar Re Mi, who won the Sheema Classic at Meydan in March, will attempt to become the first filly or mare to win the race since Time Charter in 1983 while the French filly, Daryakana, who is trained by Alain de Royer-Dupre, would be the first cross-Channel winner since Hurricane Run in 2006.
The field is completed Youmzain, who has been placed twice in the race before, still without Group One victory in Britain but for the third year there is no runner for Godolphin. The yard, which has won the race five times before, did have some success over the weekend with a pair of Group One winners. Campanologist won the Grosser Preis Von Lotto Hamburg for Frankie Dettori and Saeed bin Suroor on Saturday and the next day Mahmood al Zarooni, who only started training for Godolphin in March, achieved the double feat of a first Group One and Classic winner when Buzzword won the Deutsches Derby.
Reflecting on the victory of Buzzword, Simon Crisford, Godolphin’s racing manager, said: “It’s been fantastic in Germany this year and we won the 2000 Guineas with Frozen Power. He really derives it. He’s such a tough an honest colt and he’s danced every dance at the highest level, from Royal Ascot to Derbys, to Guineas to French Guineas sp he deserves a win of this nature and it was a good performance.
“We’ll sit down with Mahmood and Sheikh Mohammed and make a plan but I imagine he’ll be globetrotting because his chances would be better overseas than in England. There’s a very limited number of races open to horse like that here at the moment.”
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