So many threads from the 2025 flat campaign will weave together at the official end of the British season at Ascot on Saturday including, unfortunately, the knotty issue of pacemakers.
For once the Champions Day billing looks justifiable with a handful of Group One races topped by a feature that really could live up to being the race of the season.
The prospect of a tripartite clash between Ireland’s Delacroix, Ombudsman from England, and the French star Calandagan in the QIPCO Champion Stakes is one to savour.
Ombudsman is officially the world’s top ranked racehorse right now. His two main rivals are rated just behind him. Another of Europe’s globally ranked luminaries, Field Of Gold, lines up in the preceding Queen Elizabeth II Stakes over a mile.
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It hardly gets more elite in equine terms, and the continent’s top trainers and riders are there too. There’s even a bit of human needle to stir into the mix.
Field Of Gold and Ombudsman are both trained by England’s top trainer John Gosden, an elegantly fluent figure, nevertheless described last month as something of a “whinge” by no less than Aidan O’Brien. The Irishman even doubled down on the term on Thursday, although insisting it was all lighthearted.
Unless it’s when building the profile of a Coolmore stallion prospect, public comments by Ireland’s champion trainer usually lean more towards anodyne than trash-talk. Just how lightheartedly O’Brien’s dig was taken by Gosden is debatable. But there’s clearly a vibe between the two rivals, one that at least partly revolves around the contentious issue of pacemakers.
The blight of runners being employed to help stable companions is nothing new but rarely has come to the fore as much as this season. Qirat’s 150/1 Sussex Stakes shocker was the most obvious case, but plenty controversy has revolved around Ombudsman too.
Gosden’s failure to employ one was largely blamed for the Godolphin star’s Eclipse defeat by Delacroix in July. By the time they met again in York’s Juddmonte, another 150/1 shot, Birr Castle got drafted in and wound up dominating much of the proceedings.
Ignored by the other runners, Birr Castle looked like pulling off another shock for much of the race until eventually wound in by Ombudsman and Delacroix. Afterwards, O’Brien rather sniffed that the whole race was turned into little more than an unsatisfactory sprint.
An ideal decider between the pair in the Irish Champion Stakes was scotched when Gosden painted a picture of Ombudsman being ganged up on by a platoon of Ballydoyle pacesetters around Leopardstown. That looked to have killed off any chance of a rubber match. But now it’s happening at Ascot, and with a soupcon of grudge to boot.
It makes for a superb prospect. Even Delacroix’s rider Christophe Soumillon believes it will be better than the Arc. Calandagan couldn’t run in that because he’s a gelding, and a supporting cast includes no less than Economics. Almeric is also an intriguing unknown factor.
And yet, the influence of pacemakers could once again prove critical. Ombudsman has a different one this time in Devil’s Advocate. O’Brien runs Mount Kilimanjaro. He’s in the stall next to Ombudsman in what might give Gosden nightmares of Enable’s 2018 Breeders’ Cup win after which he took exception to a Ballydoyle pacemaker running close to her.
If it all makes for tactical intrigue, the prospect of so much attention on horses with little or no ambition towards winning jars. The old line about a strong pace suiting everyone is bogus and deflects from the virtue of tactical versatility that some horses have and some don’t.
Ombudsman and Calandagan both appear to like a strong pace at which to aim. Delacroix beat Lambourn from the front on his first start of this season. He probably won’t try to do the same here, but such adaptability might ultimately prove crucial in a race that promises to define a season.
Or it might be the QEII that winds up doing that. On figures it is less competitive as Field Of Gold has 8lbs in hand based on his superb Royal Ascot display in June. He was lame after that Sussex debacle and has been out of action since. He mightn’t be the same horse, or he might be even better.
If he is, he could score by daylight even against a horse as good as Rosallion. But 15 rivals, including a Ballydoyle trio, and Alakazi for Johnny Murtagh, suggest plenty are prepared to take a shot at him.
Another Irish quartet line up in the Filly & Mare but only Paddy Twomey’s King Cuan takes on a wide-open looking Sprint. He’s an outsider but the Ballydoyle supplementary entry Stay True isn’t in the first running of the Long Distance Cup as a Group One.
Trawlerman won it two years ago and landed the Gold Cup during the summer. He’s the big Gosden hope in the opener. His big threat looks to be an O’Brien rival. It could set the tone for a massive day.
