The older horses could outnumber the solitary three-year-old by 10-to-one in the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot on Saturday, but since the three-year-old in question is Golden Horn, the Derby and Eclipse Stakes winner, his elders will still be odds-against to beat the high-class colt.
Golden Horn is top-priced at 1-2 to extend his unbeaten record to six races after 11 horses were declared for Ascot’s most prestigious Group One contest on Monday, including Snow Sky, the Hardwicke Stakes winner at Royal Ascot, who received a supplementary entry at a cost of £75,000. Snow Sky is generally the joint second-favourite at 7-1 with Eagle Top, a stablemate of Golden Horn at John Gosden’s stable in Newmarket, and it is 10-1 bar those three.
Postponed and Telescope, who finished behind Snow Sky and Eagle Top in the Hardwicke last time, are also on course to line up on Saturday, along with Flintshire, the runner-up behind Treve in last month’s Grand Prix de St Cloud.
There are no Irish-trained runners left in the possible field after Aidan O’Brien scratched the Group One-winning three-year-old fillies Qualify and Diamondsandrubies, but Dylan Mouth, from Stefano Botti’s stable in Italy, is expected to be the first Italian-trained runner in the King George since 1989 and will attempt to become only the second to win the race after the great Ribot, whose five-length success in 1956 came on his only start in Britain during a 16-race unbeaten career.
Another great King George from the past will be remembered in the run-up to Saturday’s race, which will be the 40th anniversary of Grundy’s epic battle with Bustino up the length of Ascot’s home straight. And, as if in tribute, the feature event could also have a vintage feel to it, visually at least, with the owner-breeders Anthony Oppenheimer and Prince Khalid Abdullah responsible for three of the first four horses in the betting.
Oppenheimer, who generally races fillies and sells colts, has his first real chance to win a race which his family sponsored for many years via the De Beers diamond company. Prince Khalid, meanwhile, will hope to record only his second win in the King George, after Dancing Brave’s defeat of Shardari, Triptych and Shahrastani in 1986, with either Snow Sky or Flintshire.
The green, white and pink colours have been carried by a long list of outstanding Group One performers since, but their failure to add another King George to the honour roll shows how difficult it is to win at the highest level, even for an owner-breeder with immense wealth and experience to draw upon.
“Workforce went quite close and we’ve had one or two near misses,” Teddy Grimthorpe, Prince Khalid’s racing manager, said on Monday. “We just haven’t necessarily had the right horse at the right time.
“These races are incredibly difficult to win at the best of times, and if you are an owner-breeder, what you get is not always in your hands. It can be in the lap of the gods.”
Timeform’s ratings suggest that Flintshire has 2lb in hand of Snow Sky, though the latter is still improving at four years of age and his front-running victory in the Hardwicke was his strongest form to date. Flintshire’s quality is more established, as he has already lined up for 10 Group One events, winning twice and finishing second five times, and Grimthorpe does not favour the chance of one over the other.
“As someone once said, we don’t rate our friends,” he said. “They’re both coming into the race in very good form. We were a bit disappointed to say the least with Flintshire in the Coronation Cup [at Epsom on 6 June], he didn’t really seem to spark at all, but he came back and ran a really good race in the Grand Prix de St Cloud [on 28 June] and gave Treve a little bit of a fright.
“That suggested to us that he was back on form, he came out of the race really well and worked really nicely at Chantilly racecourse on Tuesday morning. His form with Treve is probably superior to anything in Europe of the older horse brigade and now we’ll see the mettle of a very, very good Derby winner.
“Snow Sky is slightly different, he ran a super race [when third] in the St Leger last year and he’s progressed through this year nicely. He had a battle with Brown Panther [to win] in the Yorkshire Cup, and he was going so well before Royal Ascot that it encouraged [Sir] Michael [Stoute] to run three in the Hardwicke and the result was very satisfactory for us.
“You can make the odd excuse but for me, he had them fairly stone cold on the turn coming into the straight. If they’d all finished in a heap just behind him you’d have thought that he’d stolen it, but I didn’t see them making a lot of headway in the last bit. He certainly deserves a crack at a Group One and this fits perfectly into his schedule.”
Golden Horn will attempt to become only the fourth horse in history to win the Derby, Eclipse and King George in the same season after Nashwan, Mill Reef and Tulyar in 1989, 1971 and 1952 respectively, and should go to post on the fast ground that suits him so well.
“We had a bit of drizzle this morning, amounting to around 1mm, and the going is a mixture of good and good-to-firm,” Chris Stickels, Ascot’s clerk of the course, said on Monday.
“We’re forecast a drying day tomorrow and as things stand, the plan is to water the round course tonight and the straight course tomorrow. The forecast for the rest of the week is predominantly dry, with the possibility of showers on Wednesday and Friday.”
