Most every year there comes a contest billed as the ‘race of the season’ and Saturday’s King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Qipco Stakes shapes as a worthy 2023 candidate.
There’s plenty of evidence of how such heavily hyped events fail to live up to their billing, but that won’t prevent eager anticipation of Ascot’s midsummer highlight where Aidan O’Brien’s dual-Derby hero Auguste Rodin faces what looks a definitive test.
The regally bred colt that flopped in the Guineas retrieved his reputation with glory at Epsom followed by a relatively underwhelming Derby follow-up at the Curragh earlier this month.
That he has been fighting out for ante-post favouritism all week with King Of Steel, the horse he beat by half-a-length at Epsom, underlines how Auguste Rodin has plenty to do to convince any naysayers.
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After that eventful Curragh Classic, both O’Brien and jockey Ryan Moore were quick to argue the son of Deep Impact and Rhododendron is significantly better than he showed on home turf.
Now, he must prove it by becoming the 13th Irish-trained winner of a contest thankfully this year fulfilling the role it was originally created for in staging a potentially conclusive clash of the generations.
Auguste Rodin and King Of Steel represent the Classic crop against an older brigade packed with depth.
O’Brien’s Luxembourg has scored at the top level for the last three years and will be backed up by other stable companions Bolshoi Ballet and Point Lonsdale.
How the Ballydoyle quartet shape tactically is just one of many intriguing threads to this King George, which will see last year’s winner Pyledriver attempt to become just the fourth horse to win more than once.
How deep the race is, though, is underlined both by the bookmakers’ calculation about Emily Upjohn being best of the seniors and how a horse as talented as the Grand Prix De Saint-Cloud winner Westover is relegated to outsider status.
If it all configures into a race to savour, the complicating factor coming in the easy ground conditions that brings another older star in Hukum into the equation.
Last year’s Derby winner Desert Crown was ruled out through injury but his Sandown conqueror neatly ties in the form link.
Older horses have had the King George edge recently with their juniors emerging on top just four times in the last dozen years.
It’s a slightly skewed statistic, though, since the hat-trick heroine Enable helped both sides, and the broader context was of a race increasingly skipped by top three-year-old talent.
This will be the first time since 1994 the first two at Epsom have renewed rivalry at Ascot, while Auguste Rodin will try to become just the eighth horse to complete the Epsom Derby-Irish Derby-King George hat-trick.
Previous horses to have managed it include some of the greatest names in the game’s history from Nijinsky, through Shergar to Galileo, the last to pull it off 22 years ago.
His grandson has a shot at the feat come 3.40 on Saturday and just over two and a half minutes could make or break Auguste Rodin’s reputation.
If soft ground conditions aren’t ideal for Auguste Rodin, he does at least have Group One winning form on it. There is also the 11lbs weight for age concession from his elders that has proved decisive in the past.
That also throws up a scenario many are prepared to buy into where King Of Steel reverses the Derby outcome.
Circumstances at Epsom dictated jockey Kevin Stott’s hand to an extent as gaps opened that demanded taking. It meant the lightly raced grey was in front for quite some time and provided a perfect target for Auguste Rodin to run down.
King Of Steel subsequently landed the King Edward at Royal Ascot and the decision to skip what looked an obvious Group One opportunity in the Grand Prix de Paris testifies to his connections’ confidence.
The prospect of easy conditions doesn’t appear to faze the King Of Steel camp either, while O’Brien has admitted that it is far from ideal for his number one hope.
Considering how the option of waiting for York’s Juddmonte International at 10 furlongs was there, and how O’Brien has mostly treated the King George as an older horse option in recent years, Auguste Rodin’s presence alone is noteworthy.
Billed as a potential Triple Crown winner at the start of the season, the way he has transformed himself since that Guineas disaster in May suggests a proper mile and a half talent that may not yet be fully exposed.
Separately, it has been confirmed that the 2021 Derby winner Adayar, who followed up in that year’s King George, has been retired to stud.
Trainer Charlie Appleby had tried to add a prestigious 10-furlong Group One to Adayar’s CV but defeat behind Israr in the Princess of Wales’s Stakes earlier this month convinced the Godolphin team to call time on his racing career.
