Champions Day: Trainer talk

Coming as it does at the end of a long season, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect Champions Day to throw up a few surprise results, especially with the ground frequently coming up softer than most of the competitors have been running on all year.

However, results from the eight editions of Champions Day to have been staged at Ascot so far don’t offer too much encouragement for those expecting to see the form book turned on its head on Saturday.

Focusing on the five championship races on the card, only 40% of winners (16/40) have returned an SP greater than 5/1, while that figure goes down to just 7.5% (3/40) when looking at horses to have won at 16/1 or bigger – Seal of Approval (16/1) in the 2013 Fillies & Mares Stakes, Royal Diamond (20/1) in the same year’s Long Distance Cup and Sands of Mali (28/1) in last season’s Champions Sprint Stakes.

Wow! Sands Of Mali (28-1) makes all to get the better of Harry Angel and cause a huge upset in the Champions Sprint at Ascot. 👏 #ChampionsDay #WhatAPerformance pic.twitter.com/1wHirtcrkX

— Racing TV (@RacingTV) October 20, 2018

Clearly, there will be some horses on Saturday for whom it is simply one race too many, running well below expectations as a result. That is the big concern for connections of Magical, the current favourite for the most valuable heat on the card, the Champion Stakes. She will be making her ninth start of the year at Ascot and only 13 days after what appeared a very hard race in the Arc, when weakening to finish fifth after racing closer than ideal to the fierce gallop.

There is no exact science when it comes to predicting whether she – and others – will be able to run to her best in such trying circumstances, but one factor that we can consider is the record of her trainer on Champions Day when it comes to producing a horse to perform to a level on a par (or above) their pre-race rating, given as a run-to-form percentage (RTF%) – a more detailed description of the methodology behind this can be found here.

Using the results from every Champions Day since 2012 – Timeform had not started collating run-to-form date for the 2011 edition – we can see that 72.8% of horses trained by Aidan O’Brien ran up to pre-race expectations so far as their ratings go, a figure that compares favourably with that of his contemporaries.

Looking at trainers who have saddled more than 10 runners on Champions Day since 2012, O’Brien and John Gosden (also 72.8%) are comfortably clear of the remainder in terms of their RTF%, despite both men having had more than double the number of runners of most other trainers (all bar Richard Fahey, who has a RTF% of 58.5% from 28 runners).

Admittedly, it is hardly ground-breaking information that two of the best trainers of their generation are also at the forefront in this regard, but it begins to paint a picture of what makes them so good at what they do, the art of not only being able to produce their horses to run to a high standard, but to do so consistently and over a sustained period of time.

They are not alone, of course, and we’ve picked out three other trainers who know what it takes to get a horse ready to run for the big money on Britain’s richest raceday.

Dermot Weld

Dermot Weld is impossible to miss off this list with a RTF% of 88.2%, for all that his sample size is much smaller than those discussed before. Indeed, Weld has had only nine runners at Champions Day since 2012, but it is what that group have achieved that more than justifies his inclusion, with his tally of winners already standing at four.

Rite of Passage (Long Distance Cup) and Sapphire (Fillies & Mares) got the ball rolling when giving their trainer a double on the day in 2012, while he soon added a second Long Distance Cup win to his tally courtesy of Forgotten Rules in 2014. Weld also saddled Free Eagle to finish third when favourite for that year’s Champion Stakes, but he didn’t need to wait long to make amends in the feature event, with Fascinating Rock producing a high-class performance to beat the likes of Found and Jack Hobbs in a red-hot renewal the following year.

Tarnawa wins the Group 2 Blandford Stakes at @curraghrace under @chrishayes24 for Dermot Weld and @AgaKhanStuds

Goddess, who had to make her challenge from way back, finished second.

#LICW19 pic.twitter.com/nP5k93W37f

— Racing TV (@RacingTV) September 15, 2019

Weld is responsible for two runners on this year’s card in the shape of Tarnawa and Imaging. The former is definitely her trainer’s best chance of a winner in the Fillies & Mares Stakes, having continued her climb through the ranks with a comfortable Group 2 success at the Curragh last time, though Imaging does look potentially overpriced at 50/1 for the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes, especially as he was beaten just half a length by favourite The Revenant in a Group 2 at Baden-Baden back in May.

Ralph Beckett

Ralph Beckett is another trainer who has had only nine runners on Champions Day in the last seven years, but his RTF% of 87.5% is hard to ignore – as is the yard's recent hot streak – and the Fillies & Mares Stakes is a race that he has targeted to particularly good effect.

St Leger winner Simple Verse provided Beckett with his sole Champions Day success to date when following up with a defeat of her own sex here in 2015, going two better than his Oaks winner Talent had when third in 2013. Simple Verse also acquitted herself with great credit when third to Sheikhzayedroad in the Long Distance Cup in 2016, while the following year saw Mount Moriah hit the frame at big odds in the same race, seeming to excel himself with a close-up fourth behind Order of St George at 66/1.

Beckett’s sole runner on last year’s card was Mitchum Swagger in the Balmoral Handicap (below form in finishing eighth) and he is back for more this time round. He will be joined in the finale by Biometric, who won the Britannia Stakes over the same C&D at the Royal meeting back in June, but perhaps their trainer’s best chance of a winner on the card comes in a race he knows all too well, a potential clash with Tarnawa (and the rest) in the Fillies & Mares.

Admittedly, we have only seen Antonia de Vega once this season, but the three-year-old could hardly have been more impressive when winning a Newbury listed race by four lengths that day, and with the soft ground here in her favour, she is well worth another try at the highest level, with the step up to a mile and a half for the first time also likely to suit.

Last seen finishing down the field in the Group 1 Fillies' Mile at @NewmarketRace, ANTONIA DE VEGA kicks her 2019 campaign off with a taking performance in the (listed) Abingdon Stakes at @NewburyRacing for @RalphBeckett under @HarryBentley_!

📽️ @RacingTVpic.twitter.com/0Z1GolV37W

— Timeform Live (@TimeformLive) June 13, 2019

Andrew Balding

The final member of our list comes up from a slightly different angle, with Andrew Balding being a trainer who is yet to saddle a winner on Champions Day. That is not to say that his horses have not run well on the day, though, a point backed up by his RTF% of 68.4% from 20 runners, and it is surely only a matter of time before the Kingsclere handler puts that right.

Donjuan Triumphant came closest to giving Balding a win in one of the five championship races when third in the Champions Sprint Stakes 12 months ago, and he is again entered for the latest renewal of that race on Saturday. Admittedly, there is probably more depth to the six-furlong Group 1 this time round, but no horse will be more at home in the testing conditions than Donjuan Triumphant, who is a real soft-ground specialist, and it would be no surprise to see him hit the frame once again at rewarding odds.

Other performances to note include those of Elm Park, who was beaten only two and a half lengths in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes in 2015, and Highland Colori, who also finished close-up in the following year’s Balmoral Handicap.

Over in a flash – Fox Tal quickens smartly to defy a 319 day break and win impressively under @oismurphy for @AndrewBalding2 at @DoncasterRaces… pic.twitter.com/H7tiKIvTYB

— At The Races (@AtTheRaces) September 11, 2019

Looking ahead to this year, however, and Balding appears to have assembled one of his strongest Champions Day squads yet, with Fox Tal appealing as an interesting contender for the Champion Stakes. Supplemented at great expense earlier in the week, he created a deep impression when making a winning return after 11 months off in a minor event at Doncaster last month, and, still relatively unexposed in the context of this race, there is no way of knowing where his ceiling will be.