Twelve left in St Leger
It used to be said that the fittest horse wins the Guineas, the luckiest horse wins the Derby and the best horse wins the St Leger.
However, this year’s renewal of the Ladbrokes St Leger, at Doncaster on Saturday, is likely to put even more of a premium of stamina with heavy rain forecast for the area this week. David Williams, the clerk of the course at Doncaster, said: “It’s due in this evening and overnight into Tuesday. We could wake up tomorrow with anything between 20 to 30mm of rain so it’s pretty significant. And thereafter we could see some more rain on Friday, amounting to seven to eight millimetres. It would be nice to see some rain but not that amount.”
The ground is currently described as good to firm but, with three days of racing before the St Leger card, Williams said that the turf for the final Classic of the season is “certainly going to be on the easier side of good. By Saturday the ground’s going to be pretty cut up.”
There is no provision for keeping a strip of fresh ground in the home straight but Williams is aiming to provide new turf on the round course for the big race.
The St Leger will have a maximum of 12 runners after the latest declaration stage. Rewilding, the winner of the Group Two Great Voltigeur Stakes at York last month, will be attempting to win a sixth St Leger for Godolphin and a first for their new trainer Mahmood al Zarooni.
Rewilding may be aided in that cause by Corsica, who is trained by Mark Johnston and owned by Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed al Maktoum, the son of Godolphin’s founder, Sheikh Mohammed. Corsica is a front-runner and looks likely to be ridden that way again.
Snow Fairy, the dual Oaks winner, has been left in the race by Ed Dunlop but her attempt to become the first filly to win the St Leger since User Friendly in 1992 would be compromised if the ground is turned significantly by rain.
Aidan O'Brien, who has won the race three times with Milan (2001), Brian Boru (2003) and Scorpion (2005), has a choice from Bright Horizon, Flying Cross, Joshua Tree and Midas Touch this time.
James Given, who claimed his biggest winner of the season thus far when Indian Days won the Group Two International Bosphorus Cup in Turkey on Sunday, will be hoping to cap his best season with a first Classic winner as Dandino tries for a sixth win in five starts this season.
The Irish Field Irish St Leger, unlike the original, is open to older horses and Rite Of Passage, the winner of the Gold Cup at Royal Ascot in June, is one 17 possible runners left in at the Curragh. Dermot Weld's gelding, who was third to Peddlers Cross in a Grade One Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival in March, has not run since.
The other Group One race on the card is the boylesports.com Vincent O'Brien National Stakes in which the O'Brien-trained Zoffany could follow up his victory in last month’s Phoenix Stakes in a race that the trainer has won seven times before.
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