King George no longer eclipsed
For those who were awaiting the obituary notices and the memorial date, the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes has staged a dramatic recovery.
It may have come at the expense of the Coral-Eclipse Stakes, at Sandown Park on Saturday. This year’s renewal has drawn a field of six of which Twice Over, officially rated at 123, is 5lbs below the top contender likely to be running in the King George at Ascot in three weeks’ time.
The King George has risen almost Lazarus-like from what was considered to be a fatal disease. The seemingly incurable sickness was diagnosed as neglect by top three-year-old colts who have avoided the mid-season showpiece for in recent years.
The last three-year-old to win the race was Alamshar, previously the winner of the Irish Derby, and it was also the time that the Derby winner, Kris Kin, ran in the King George, where he finished third.
It had limped on surviving, for example, in 2006 on a starvation diet of three of the top-rated older horses in the world fighting out a thrilling finish. Then Hurricane Run was rated at 126 for his beating of Electrocutionist and Heart’s Cry. Sadly the following year was a sham, a pale imitation.
Well, no, actually. Dylan Thomas beat Youmzain by fourth lengths and they were also the first two past the post in that year’s Prix De L’Arc De Triomphe and the next two winners - Duke Of Marmalade and Conduit - were Group One winners before they added the King George to the impressive CVs.
If the King George had plumbed such depths of mediocrity, with a tatty collection of has-beens and never-wases, then why did those who guide the careers of each season’s Classic generation not take them on?
Therein lays one of the subtle changes that had taken place. The days when the Derby winner was expected to take the Irish Derby and the King George as an uninterrupted trilogy have given way to an era that is light years away from 1983, when Shareef Dancer won the Irish Derby and was then retired because he was deemed too valuable to race. Now there has been a reinvention of the older horse as more than simply an animal who has not won a race of sufficient stature to warrant a place at stud. Godolphin was at the forefront of this thinking and it has caught on.
The point was not lost on Aidan O’Brien or his owners at the Coolmore syndicate, who, after their victory with Galileo in 2001, had largely by-passed the race until Dylan Thomas’s win in 2007. After that race O’Brien said: “In other years, like with Galileo, we had to go to the King George with three-year-olds because we didn’t have any other horses to go instead. The King George is a tough race and we always felt that if you go to the King George with a three-year-old, they need a break after it. We felt that, with Galileo, he won but it left its mark on him."
Another shift in policy has been for Derby winners to be sent chasing the 10-furlong Group One victory that is, apparently, so beloved of breeders. Both Motivator and Authorized tried and failed in the Eclipse Stakes, although Sea The Stars balanced the books in those terms last year. Given that the two pre-eminent young sires, Montjeu and Galileo, also failed in such an attempt to win a 10-furlong Group One race but have proved it is no barrier to great success as stallions and this year’s the King George is scheduled to have another clash of the Derby winners.
When Workforce (pictured) broke the track record at Epsom his trainer, Sir Michael Stoute, nominated the Irish Derby and the King George. The reasoning for this was simple; having bred a horse who is ideally suited to a true-run 12 furlongs why reinvent the wheel by turning him into a 10-furlong horse?
O’Brien has also revised his recent strategy, with Fame And Glory, his leading older middle-distance, not figuring among his King George entries which are dominated by Balloydoyle’s three-year-olds. Top of them now is Cape Blanco after he won the Irish Derby at the Curragh on Sunday.
The senior division will still be strongly represented by Stoute’s second intended runner, Harbinger, who put up one of the most impressive performance of Royal Ascot when he won the Group Two Hardwicke Stakes. But Harry Herbert, Highclere Thoroughbred Racing managing director, knows that Stoute stable jockey, Ryan Moore, is unlikely to choose to ride his owners’ horse. “I haven't broached the subject yet with Sir Michael,” Herbert told Racing UK. “But it’ll all come out in the wash and we are still a number of weeks away and I'm sure Ryan will keep his own silence in the meantime. I'd imagine it's highly unlikely any jockey would get off a Derby winner and I don't expect Ryan to ride Harbinger but I hope I'm wrong.
“Sir Michael will have his own thoughts on who should replace him if that's the case. We haven't got there but will obviously bring a top man in who will presumably get a feel of him before King George day.”
Those who thought that the King George had been replaced as the summer’s main event will have to think again.
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