The Champion Stakes at Ascot, the highlight of the track’s Champions Day card this weekend, has barely figured in the official annual assessment of the “World’s Best Horse Race” since the prize – which is based on the average end-of-year rating of the first four horses home – was first awarded in 2015.
The 2022 Champion, in which Bay Bridge beat Adayar with the previously unbeaten Baaeed fourth, was the runner-up behind Flightline’s sign-off win in the Breeders’ Cup Classic a couple of weeks later, but five of the past 10 runnings have failed to make even the top 10 globally. To date, York’s International Stakes, in 2020 and 2024, is the only British race to finish at the top of the pile.
