Irish Champion Stakes Day: Poet can have the last Word

Highlight of the first day of Irish Champions Weekend is the Irish Champion Stakes itself which Aidan O’Brien will be trying to win for the eighth time. However, it’s six years since Ballydoyle’s last success in the race with So You Think who was their sixth winner in nine years. More recent renewals have all gone to stables outside Ireland despite O’Brien deploying some of his best horses. St Nicholas Abbey was third to Snow Fairy (Ed Dunlop) in 2012, The Fugue (John Gosden) won in 2013 when the Ballydoyle representative Kingsbarns was all but pulled up, The Grey Gatsby (then with Kevin Ryan) upset the long odds-on Derby winner Australia in 2014 and neither Found nor Highland Reel were good enough against Golden Horn (Gosden again) in 2015.

Both Found and Highland Reel tried again last year, joined by high-class three-year-old filly Minding, but none of that crack trio from Ballydoyle proved a match for the top French colt Almanzor. Jean-Claude Rouget’s three-year-old accounted for an outstanding field twelve months ago which, with Harzand also among them, attracted the Derby winner for the third year running.

This Saturday’s field doesn’t have the same strength in depth but it does feature another strong contender from Ballydoyle in Churchill. He was a beaten favourite in last month’s Juddmonte International at York but a two-length defeat to top-class older rival Ulysses represented a return to the form which had won him the 2000 Guineas at both Newmarket and the Curragh in the spring. It was certainly a better effort than his lacklustre display in the St James’s Palace at Royal Ascot and showed that he’s as effective at a mile and a quarter as he is at a mile. Churchill’s a high-class performer, but he’s not the stand-out at the ratings which best odds of even-money might suggest.

Fellow three-year-old Eminent is next in the betting, but on what he’s shown to date, particularly in Group 1 company, he’s likely to require a career-best to make the places. Sixth behind Churchill at Newmarket, Eminent has since proved more at home over longer trips, but he finished just behind Ballydoyle’s other main entry Cliffs of Moher when fourth in the Derby and fifth in the Eclipse. While the latter was behind Eclipse winner Ulysses again when fourth at York, Eminent does at least come here on the back of a win. That was in the Prix Guillaume d’Ornano at Deauville, the race Almanzor won before his success twelve months ago. Eminent was given a good ride from the front by Ryan Moore at Deauville, but Frankie Dettori, who takes over on Saturday, might have his work cut out to execute similar tactics given the presence of confirmed front-runner Success Days who’s just one of several in the field who normally race prominently.

Success Days and Moonlight Magic (who was sixth) both contested last year’s warmer renewal, but Churchill faces potentially more serious rivals among the older horses in the field. Now with Dermot Weld, The Grey Gatsby isn’t the force of old, but Weld has a stronger candidate with the mare Zhukova who has an impressive strike-rate which includes a win on this card twelve months ago in the Group 3 Enterprise Stakes over a mile and a half. Already a Grade 1 winner at Belmont earlier this year, she had excuses last time and, unlike the favourite, would be suited by any further softening of the ground.

Tattersalls Gold Cup winner Decorated Knight needs to improve on his last couple of efforts in the Eclipse and Juddmonte International, but a return to the form which saw him pip Ulysses for second behind Highland Reel in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes at Royal Ascot would make him look overpriced. Ulysses’ name keeps recurring in various form-lines, and while he’s not in the line-up, it’s surely significant that his trainer Sir Michael Stoute is willing to pitch stable-companion Poet’s Word into Group 1 company for the first time here. He’s made great strides since winning a handicap at Chelmsford on his reappearance, running O’Brien’s very smart Deauville to a neck in the Huxley Stakes at Chester when shaping like the best horse and then returning from a break to land the Glorious Stakes at Goodwood last month.

There must have been plenty of easier pattern-race options for Poet’s Word but he’s a typical improver for his stable and who must have been showing the right signs to be given his chance; he doesn’t need to make much more progress to be involved. He’s another who won’t be troubled by softer ground or the race turning into a good test at the trip if, as expected, there’s plenty of pace on.

Winter would have been a fascinating and dangerous opponent to Churchill in the Irish Champion Stakes – too dangerous perhaps - which might explain why O’Brien is aiming her at a fifth Group 1 win against her own sex instead earlier on the card in the Matron Stakes. She should prove up to the task, though stable-companion Roly Poly, winner of the Falmouth Stakes and Prix Rothschild on her last two starts, and last year’s placed fillies, Persuasive and Qemah, make it a well-contested renewal.