Saturday’s British Champions Day is the final flourish to Europe’s flat season and so a last chance to see a definitive championship performance that puts a stamp on the 2025 campaign. It’s what the Ascot extravaganza was designed for, and for once it might deliver.
There have always been too many moving parts to justifiably bill the meeting as some championship day of destiny. Frankel set the bar extravagantly high in its first two years, but he was singular enough to make consistently matching such standards an impossible dream.
Coming a fortnight after the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in Paris, and only five weeks after the Irish Champions Festival, Ascot has too often come up second best in terms of how Europe’s thin pool of elite talent gets dispersed. And that’s without taking the upcoming Breeders’ Cup into account.
The October date has also left it open to the vicissitudes of the British weather. Ground conditions more akin to Cheltenham in January have tested tired horses at the end of a long season and led to outcomes that made little logic in any overall sense.
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But for once the weather gods look to have played ball. Actual good, proper flat racing ground is expected. So too is an impressive cast list, none more so than in the Champion Stakes itself which promises a tripartite clash of rare quality.
Aidan O’Brien’s Delacroix is set for a ‘rubber match’ clash with Godolphin’s Ombudsman. The score is 1-1 between the two best horses owned by racing’s two superpower operations. It’s elite enough to even make a plucky underdog of France’s top gelding Calandagan.
History is littered with dashed hopes of epic confrontations. Some will probably only believe they’ll all line up it when the starting gates open, and even then, something might tear up the script like the 40/1 Anmaat did a year ago. But the potential for a seismic encounter is there.
The prospect of the top trio ranged alongside each other at the furlong pole and driving for the line is an intoxicating one. Should one of them ultimately go on to win with authority and it will also provide the enduring image of 2025.
There hasn’t been such a performance yet. Field Of Gold sparkled briefly in the St James’s Place Stakes. The admirable Lambourn won two unexciting Derbies. Had Minnie Hauk held off Daryz in the Arc maybe that would be the enduring impression into the future. But she didn’t.
There has been no single display of individual brilliance such as Baeed in the 2022 Juddmonte, or even Ace Impact in the Arc a year later.
There has certainly been no season-defining run of excellence such as Frankel or Sea The Stars, who also had their outstanding individual moments burned into the popular memory. Images of Frankel’s Queen Anne or that unforgettable Arc escape act by the Irish star will never fade.
Delacroix, Ombudsman and Calandagan have each won twice at Group One level this season. Ombudsman’s effort in reversing Eclipse form with Delacroix in a farcically run Juddmonte helped him be the current top-rated racehorse on the plant.
That O’Brien and Coolmore are prepared to risk their blue-chip stallion prospect against him again underlines a sense of such status still being wide open for the assorted international handicap bean-counters to sort out come December.
Topping such a tot is the kind of advertising that seals the credentials of a prospective top stallion. Such considerations might be only theoretical for the Calandagan team in this case but for Coolmore and Godolphin they’re front and centre.
Delacroix is already a priceless stud prospect for Coolmore, his Dubawi bloodline an ideal outcross for all their blue-blooded Galileo mares. Any kind of win on Saturday will seal his reputation. A win for the ages might add a zero to the value of this Delacroix.
It’s the kind of sum that will concentrate his trainer’s mind much more than the subtext that will run through not just Saturday’s action, but probably until the Hong Kong International Carnival in December.
O’Brien is just a 5/2 shot with some firms to break his own 2017 world record tally of 28 Group/Grade One victories. He needs seven more before the end of the year to manage it.
There are three more top-flight races in France this year, including next weekend’s Prix Royal Oak. Doncaster has the Futurity. A German Group One next month is unlikely to enter Ballydoyle calculations but the two days of the Breeders’ Cup in Del Mar most definitely will.
If the chase is a handy narrative for media trying to knit various story threads together it appears to be of limited interest to O’Brien himself. Offer him a choice of the record or any kind of Delacroix victory on Saturday and it’s probably no choice at all.
The tantalising prospect for everyone else though is that an enthralling looking Champion Stakes does in fact live up to its title and supplies a performance that will be recalled for many years to come.
Something for the Weekend
Coolmore’s decision to supplement the St Leger third Stay True (12.55pm) into the Long Distance Cup can pay off at Ascot on Saturday. It will be a big test for the lightly raced three-year-old, particularly against the grizzled veteran Trawlerman, winner of the race two years ago. However, the reigning Gold Cup champion could be vulnerable to a late burst from a colt that launched his challenge plenty soon enough at Doncaster.
The French mare Quisisana (2.25pm) never landed a blow when fancied for the Arc. It’s a quick turnaround for a famously fragile runner who nevertheless landed a Group One on good ground at Deauville during the summer. Kalpana had a harder race in the Arc while Estrange wouldn’t like the going to get any quicker.
