Ascot racecourse bowed to the inevitable on Friday morning and moved three of the contests on Saturday’s Champions Day card – Britain’s richest day at the races – to the tight, inner turf track that is normally reserved for hurdling during winter.
Announcing the move on Friday gave punters and an anticipated crowd of around 30,000 racegoers more certainty as they start to plot a path through the Champions Day card. Last year’s turnout of 23,872 was the second lowest in the event’s 12-year history, but the prospect of (possibly) seeing Frankie Dettori riding in Britain for the last time is expected to see a significant boost to the attendance.
The Long Distance Cup (1.15), Fillies & Mares’ Stakes (2.25) and the feature event, the £1.4m Champion Stakes, will be run on better ground than the remainder of the six-race card as a result. But the track’s insistence on referring to the circuit as the “Inner Flat course” tells its own story about a decision that was effectively forced on Ascots’ executives for the second time in five years.
The going on the Round course – the main Flat track – was soft, heavy in places following an inspection on Friday morning, while the hurdles course, which is not watered over the summer and forms part of the picnic enclosure at the Royal meeting, was good-to-soft, soft in places. The straight course, meanwhile, which stages the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes, the Champions Sprint and the Balmoral Handicap, is soft.
Shifting half of a £4.1m card to a jumps track at 24 hours’ notice is not a decision that would have been taken lightly, but with Storm Babet continuing to batter Britain and four meetings already abandoned around the country on Friday and Saturday, it was unavoidable.
Dettori will be the biggest story of the day and Ray Cochrane, Dettori’s agent for many years, was the latest former colleague to suggest this week that the jockey is likely to be a fairly frequent visitor to Britain next year, despite his decision to take up permanent residence in Los Angeles and ride on the US circuit. But it will still be a moment for his many fans to give him an appropriate send-off, at the track with which he has had an unbreakable association since the afternoon in September 1996 – a forerunner of Champions Day – when he went through a seven-race card.
Newton Abbot: 1.05 Iceo 1.40 Complete Unknown 2.15 Great Threat 2.55 Back Yourself 3.35 Rose Of Arcadia 4.15 Wonderful Eagle 5.00 Walks Like The Man
Ascot: 1.15 Kyprios 1.50 Mill Stream 2.25 Jackie Oh 3.05 Paddington 3.45 King Of Steel (nb) 4.25 Lattam (nap)
Catterick Bridge: 1.45 Bubbles Wonky 2.20 Sixties Chic 3.00 Oso Rapido 3.40 Wen Moon 4.20 Legal Reform 4.55 Valley Of Flowers 5.30 Ask Peter
Wolverhampton: 4.12 Alyara 4.50 My Roxanne 5.25 Shuangxi 6.00 Glamorous Express 6.30 Let’s Go Hugo 7.00 Huscari 7.30 Tarjeeh 8.00 Hot Team 8.30 Chifa
Dettori’s book of five rides includes three favourites or second-favourites – Kinross (1.50), Free Wind (2.25) and King Of Steel (3.45), and two live each-way shots in Trawlerman (1.15) and his 2,000 Guineas winner, Chaldean (3.05). On paper, Kinross is Dettori’s strongest chance of the day in the Champions Sprint, but his best recent form is at seven furlongs and he does not have as much in hand of his field as his price might suggests.
Mill Stream (1.50), who put up a career-best when racing on soft ground for the first time at Deauville in August, is a live each-way alternative at around 10-1 with William Buick taking over in the saddle, while Aidan O’Brien’s Kyprios (1.15), last year’s Gold Cup winner, has obvious claims in the opening stayers’ event.
O’Brien and Ryan Moore also have a big chance against the Dettori-ridden Free Wind with the improving three-year-old Jackie Oh (2.25) and obvious prospects too in the QEII, where Paddington (3.05) should return to winning form after a break.
Dettori, however, may save the best until last, as King Of Steel (3.45) looks to have his optimum trip and ground conditions as he attempts to finally get off the mark at Group One level.
