Our Senior Form Analyst on Saturday’s mouth-watering renewal of the richest race ever run at Ascot, live on Sky Sports Racing.
King Georges come in many forms, from signature performance to sudden announcement and, very rarely, a free-for-all, but at the heart of this edition is a renewed rivalry, a sequel to a blockbusting Coronation Cup. Here’s a look at the players for a must-watch race at 4.10 on Saturday, live on Sky Sports Racing.
Jan Brueghel
Some at Ballydoyle are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. If Jan Brueghel is indeed to become a great – and he has the scope to do so, if still a way to go – then it won’t be by birth nor chance but achieved, and achieved the hard way! It will be chipped and chiselled from a slab of steel and stamina, a matter of engineering, a horse built to grind and find.
Jan Brueghel is heading for Ascot
Of the stable’s four previous King George winners, he’s most matched with Highland Reel, another Galileo workhorse who was greater than the sum of his parts. Likewise a pre-race sweater, he too came to the King George as a four-year-old via the Coronation Cup.
The mode and method of what Jan Brueghel did at Epsom gave rise to my nickname for him of The Fire Extinguisher, as there are few if any middle-distance horses around who bring the fire that Calandagan can, and Jan Brueghel doused him in a drawn-out duel which was stealthily stacked in his favour by virtue of the track, the ground and the servicing gallop by team-mate Continuous.
Before Conduit in 2008/9, the last St Leger winner to add the following year’s King George was Ballymoss in the ‘fifties, the first big Flat horse for Vincent O’Brien, a training giant on whose shoulders Aidan is standing at Ballydoyle. The conditions and configuration of Ascot, along with lessons learned from Epsom, makes for different battlelines with Calandagan for one, besides a stronger supporting cast, but the rhythmical, robotic Jan Brueghel gets a software upgrade after every race. That begins to beg the question of not how does he win, but how does he get beat?
Calandagan
The high-powered Ballydoyle brute, who got first run courtesy of another Moore masterclass, was just too strong in the end, but Calandagan had run the faster in each of the prior five furlongs, in the process recording much the higher top speed. Yes, the Coronation Cup, but also the Juddmonte from last year, against City Of Troy, when both dipped under Sea The Stars’ track record.
Calandagan (seen here winning The King Edward VII Stakes in 2024) is a Group 1 winner at last. (Photo: Zuzanna Lupa)
No horse around, let alone in this field, could have done what Calandagan did at York that day, yet the inconvenient truth is the missing link which has prompted the uncomfortable sequence of seconds which naturally raise some doubt about his stamina or spirit or both. Stamina and spirit are the calling cards of Jan Brueghel, hence a bit of a trap was set for Calandagan in the Coronation Cup, to suppress his speed by drawing him into an advanced arm wrestle. Epsom was the perfect playground for such a strategy, which ended in Calandagan waving the white flag in surrender.
The Coronation Cup starting prices of 8-13 Calandagan versus 10-3 Jan Brueghel told a tale of one’s superior status, obviously not so coming out, but this is a different day and a different course on different ground, all of which tip the scales back towards Calandagan. One would actually believe that even more so after his confidence booster in a Ballydoyle-less Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud and the reminder of not just what he can do but also how he does it, a set of skills designed for fast ground at Ascot, highlighted when he blew us away in last year’s King Edward VII.
Rebel’s Romance
In 26 races across five seasons and six different countries, Rebel’s Romance has earned over £10.8m, which works out at £37,259 for each of the 290 furlongs he has dutifully galloped on the track. That includes, don’t forget, 45½ furlongs on dirt in the second chapter of an amazing anthology which makes him objectively one of Godolphin’s most influential horses and subjectively Charlie Appleby’s best buddy. His importance was intensified as he stood tall when everything else from the stable retreated from the biggest stage of all at Royal Ascot.
Rebel’s Romance and William Buick won the Hardwicke Stakes at Royal Ascot in June
Rebel’s Romance is a great racehorse, yet he’s not a racehorse of great ability, and so he can’t win an elite race like the King George, can he? The answer to some extent can be found in the last three winners, as both Goliath and Pyledriver were unconsidered, either side of Hukum who was fourth-favourite and a similar price to Rebel’s Romance. That serves as a reminder that when electricity fails, efficiency triumphs. Rebel’s Romance is the epitome of efficiency, albeit suckered into racing too close to the hot pace when third last year.
Kalpana
Perhaps part of the consideration into retiring Bluestocking after the Arc was that Juddmonte already had the heiress apparent in Kalpana, who did what Bluestocking couldn’t as a three-year-old and win the Fillies & Mares Stakes on Champions Day, putting her 5lb ahead of where Bluestocking was at the same stage.
She may yet bloom into Bluestocking 2.0 because you wouldn’t hold against her that she hasn’t kicked on so far in 2025, in deep against some of the best boys in the Tattersalls Gold Cup before trying to give 12 lb weight-for-age to Oaks runner-up Whirl in the Pretty Polly. Both of those runs were over 1¼m, when 1½m made a discernible difference to her last year, as it will again now. Her defining moment came on soft ground and, in the unlikely event it came up similar, you can envisage her putting it to the “big two”, remembering how dominant she was last October (her last three furlongs was faster than Calandagan and co in the ten furlong Champion Stakes), though she has won twice – by wide margins – on good to firm.
Kalpana has definitely got the game to win a race like this at some stage.
Continuous
Once a St Leger winner, now reduced to the role of pacemaker for the newer wave of stable stars, he and Wayne Lordan got it right for Jan Brueghel at Epsom, less so for Los Angeles at Royal Ascot.
Jamie Lynch’s verdict
“If you learn from defeat, you haven’t really lost.” That’s the mantra for Calandagan as he goes into battle once again with Jan Brueghel, with lessons to be learnt from Epsom to put into practice at Ascot, under far more conducive conditions, the fact that this race is likely to be around 10 seconds faster in the completion than the Coronation Cup a significant stat for Calandagan, who can go to speeds the others can’t reach.
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