Champion Stakes at Ascot attracts the best but must fight to retain status

TThe Champion Stakes at Ascot, the highlight of the track’s Champions Day card this weekend, has played little part in the official annual judging of the “World’s Best Horse Race” since the award – which is based on the average year-end rating of the first four horses at home – was first awarded in 2015.

The 2022 champion, which saw Bay Bridge beat Adayar with previously unbeaten Baaeed in fourth, was runner-up behind Flightline’s sign-off win in the Breeders’ Cup Classic a few weeks later, but five of the past ten runs have failed to crack even the top ten globally. To date, York’s International Stakes, in 2020 and 2024, is the only British race to finish top of the pile.

Ascot executives will quietly take their chances this year after three of the top 12 horses worldwide at any distance all held out for Saturday’s £1.3million Champion Stakes during Monday’s five-day leg.

Ombudsman, currently tops the global rankings at 128 his emphatic success at the International Stakes in August sees him face a decider in his duel with Delacroix, who beat him in the Eclipse and went on to win the Irish Champion Stakes. But it is far from a two-horse race with King George winner Calandagan and Almaqam, the only horse besides Delacroix to beat the Ombudsman this year, also in the mix alongside William Haggas’s Economics, last year’s Irish Champion Stakes winner.

Meanwhile, the best news for racegoers and armchair fans alike is that the weather forecast remains dry and stable for a Champions Day card featuring five Group 1 races for the first time, following the Long Distance Cup’s upgrade from Group 2 status.

It is also a seven-race card for the first time this year, following the addition of a two-year-old £250,000 event as the opening race, and all five Group Ones received additional entries on Monday as owners and trainers were encouraged by the prospect of a decent racing ground and, in the case of the three circular course events, the assurance that there will be no switch to the obstacle course, a last resort that has been forced onto the track three times since 2019.

This year’s Champions Day card will be the 15th since the Champion Stakes itself was moved from Newmarket – amid much grumbling from the traditional wing of the racing fanbase – to be the culmination of Britain’s richest day of racing, and an equivalent of Champions Weekend in Ireland and Arc weekend in Paris, in the country that gave racing to the world.

It was greatly blessed by Frankel’s presence in both its first year in 2011 and a year later when the greatest horse of modern times took a bow in the main event. There were only two Group Ones on the program until the Fillies & Mares event was upgraded in 2013 and the Sprint became the card’s fourth Group One two years later, but Saturday’s seven-race card is perhaps the first with the full range and depth of quality that can stand serious comparison with the showpieces in France and Ireland.

And in a good year like this, it certainly holds up. In addition to the star-studded Champion Stakes, the likely attractions on Saturday include Field Of Gold, joint second in the global rankings, in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes, and Lazzat, second in the sprint ratings, in the Champions Sprint. Trawlerman, meanwhile, is officially the best stayer in the world this year and should prove his point in the admittedly somewhat disappointing field of six horses for the Long Distance Cup.

The problem that Champions Day still faces, even in what can now be seen as its full-fledged form, is that the key factors that determine its success from year to year are beyond the control of the organizers. It’s still uncomfortably sandwiched between the Arc and the Breeders’ Cup, both of which offer significantly high prize money, while the latter event at least offers an effective guarantee of fast terrain.

By contrast, at Ascot in mid-October, 12 of the 14 extensions of the Champion Stakes since the move from Newmarket to ground have been conducted with ‘soft’ in the common description.

This year’s Irish Champions Festival in Ireland attracted 20,000 spectators over two days, around 10,000 fewer than Ascot will host on Saturday. Yet it remains firmly anchored in the September weekend that, in an ideal world, would likely take up Champions Day, giving owners the chance to compete in Ascot, Longchamp and then the Breeders’ Cup.

Fair play to Ireland: they got there first. But it’s also another reason why we should appreciate Saturday’s exceptional Champions Day program all the more – because it could be a long time before the stars align in the same way again.