John Gosden appears likely to send Golden Horn to the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe next weekend while keeping Jack Hobbs at home. The Newmarket trainer said on Sunday that Ascot’s Champion Stakes looks a preferable target for the latter horse, assuming forecasts of a dry week in Paris prove accurate.
“If the ground did turn soft [at Longchamp], he comes back into play,” Gosden said of Jack Hobbs. “We are very much watching the weather. It is autumn and we’ve been having a huge amount of rain in August and September, so anything’s possible. But he is a horse who can run in it next year, there’s no doubt about that, and I think it would be stupid to run them both. Golden Horn has proved himself superior and I don’t see the point in going there to find out that again.”
That was an allusion to the fact that Golden Horn beat Jack Hobbs in both the Dante and the Derby in the early part of this season. Golden Horn has not had his favoured dry ground since winning the Eclipse in July but he might get it at Longchamp, if predictions of six rainless days in the area prove accurate.
Golden Horn remains a 7-1 shot for the Arc, third-favourite behind the odds-on Treve. Jack Hobbs is 10-1 with conventional bookmakers but he had drifted to 27-1 on Betfair’s exchange on Sunday night.
Dermot Weld said a decision would be made in midweek about the Arc participation of his Free Eagle, a possibly unlucky third in the Irish Champion, in which he was bumped by Golden Horn.
