Ascot Gold Cup: Max an explosive each-way bet

Aidan O’Brien has enjoyed plenty of Royal Ascot success in recent years, but his record in the Gold Cup is particularly impressive, winning six of the last 10 renewals (including the four renewals from 2006 and 2009 with Yeats) and also saddling the runner-up on two occasions.

O’Brien would have probably felt a tad unlucky not to have made it seven in the 2015 renewal, too, as Kingfisher met plenty of trouble in-running and got in to the clear all too late to throw down a proper challenge to the winner Trip To Paris (who will not run in this year’s Gold Cup due to a tendon injury). Kingfisher had been prominent in the betting for the 2016 Gold Cup immediately after last year’s race, though he has also met with a setback.

As ever though, O’Brien has plenty of strength in depth, and he still looks to have an excellent chance of landing another Gold Cup courtesy of impressive Irish St Leger winner Order of St George and English St Leger second Bondi Beach, who currently occupy the top two places in the market with most bookmakers.

Order of St George was slashed for the St Leger at Doncaster last September on the back of his impressive win in the Irish St Leger Trial at the Curragh the month earlier, but he bypassed that race in favour of the Irish version (which is open to older horses). His 11-length win over Agent Murphy marked him down as easily the best European stayer in training at the time, running to a Timeform rating of 129, which was just 1 lb lower than Golden Horn ran to when winning the Derby earlier in the season. It is therefore no surprise to see Order of St George heading the betting for this year’s Gold Cup and he will take all the beating if building on that Irish St Leger win, though he’s another who has been held back by an injury; he could make his belated reappearance in the listed Saval Beg Stakes at Leopardstown on Friday.

Bondi Beach’s runner-up effort in the St Leger – he was awarded the race by the stewards on the day but the original first past the post, Simple Verse, was reinstated on appeal – was another very smart performance on the Timeform scale, and he matched that level when winning a Limerick listed race over a mile and a half on his return. Bondi Beach did carry his head awkwardly for that success however, and he made pretty hard work of beating two rivals in the Group 3 Vintage Crop Stakes over 14 furlongs at Navan since. He’s a hard horse to weigh up but given his overall profile he, like Order of St George, could have more to offer.

Max Dynamite was also underwhelming on his reappearance when send off at 7/4-on for Sandown’s Henry II Stakes recently, finishing third of four to Pallasator (at his best on this occasion but still a bit of a risky proposition due to his past antics in the preliminaries). He might have needed the run given he’d been off for seven months since his excellent second in the Melbourne Cup, which he may well have won granted a clearer passage. Max Dynamite’s return should have set him up for the Gold Cup, however, and though he has stamina to prove over two and a half miles, he looks an appealing price at around 12/1 considering his overall profile, which for the most part has been slowly progressive in both Flat and jumps spheres.

Though Max Dynamite would have something to find with an on-song Order of St George, he is second best on current Timeform ratings for the Gold Cup, and considering he is currently a bigger price than Mizzou, who won the Sagaro Stakes from Clever Cookie on his reappearance this season but was impressively beaten by Max Dynamite in last season’s Lonsdale Cup, he looks an attractive each-way bet.