British Champions Day by RHR Angles
British Champions Day is tomorrow at Ascot, the last great afternoon of the British flat season and one of its richest. Five Group 1 races, and the best horses in Europe lined up against each other one final time before the winter. We have been through all seven races a day early so you have it first. That makes this our early indicator rather than the final word, and tomorrow’s live Angles could look slightly different once declarations, going and markets settle overnight. The ground is Good, Good to Firm in places, and with sunny spells, a light north easterly breeze and no rain in the forecast it should stay that way. The straight course races start from the far side and the round course from the inside. The draw has a real history in the Fillies & Mares, where nine of the last twelve winners came from stalls eight to twelve, and we will come back to that. Seven selections have come from six of the seven races, two of them in the Balmoral. One race is left alone, and it is not for lack of quality. 🟡12:55 ARAPAHO GOLD 3/1 in the Qatar Racing British Champions Day Two-Year-Old Conditions Stakes over six furlongs. Bred For The Trip has him through Bayside Boy, whose runners at this trip win well above our threshold and more often than their prices suggest. The only thing that held him back was the sample, one run short of the size we insist on. He won his first four races: twice at Thirsk, then the Listed Rose Bowl at Newbury, where he beat Nabati by a neck, then the Gimcrack at York by three quarters of a length from Final Objective, who went straight on to win the Flying Childers. Last time out he was third in the Mill Reef as the 5/4 favourite, carrying a 3lb penalty and beaten a short head and a neck, and the horse who won it, Nabati, is not here. He is a gelding, which shuts him out of the big juvenile Group 1s, and Michael Dods had this race marked down for him before the Mill Reef was run. Connor Beasley rides and has called him one of the nicest he has sat on. This is only the second running, so there are no trends to lean on, but last year’s winner Mission Central came here a Group 3 winner and went on to land a Group 1 at Royal Ascot. Arapaho Gold comes here a Group 2 winner. Two things to be straight about: the Dods yard has gone sixty runners without a winner, and he is drawn ten of eleven after the long trip south. Inner City Blues, for Charlie Appleby and William Buick, the team that beat him in the Mill Reef, is the one in the market to worry about.🟡 🟡13:30 AMILOC 12/1 in the Qatar Racing British Champions Long Distance Cup, a Group 1 over two miles. Rossa Ryan rides for Ralph Beckett, cheekpieces go on for the first time, and this is a definite each way price, three places from ten runners. Bred For The Trip has him through Postponed, short of our bar, and the case here is really built on the history of the race. The winner is usually a four to six year old who won last time, ran within the last five weeks and was rated 113 or higher, and more often than not had already won at Ascot. Amiloc is four, won by four lengths at Salisbury last time drawing away readily, ran exactly 36 days ago, is rated 114, and won the King Edward VII Stakes at Royal Ascot last summer. That November he finished fourth in the Breeders’ Cup Turf at Del Mar. Beckett believes two miles is his best trip. Here is the honest part: his season has been patchy. He was beaten as the 8/13 favourite in the Yorkshire Cup, unseated his rider leaving the stalls at Goodwood, and finished seventh in the Lonsdale Cup on his only completed run at this trip, and the Salisbury win came against three rivals. He has never won over two miles, which eight of the last twelve winners had. Caballo De Mar, the Prix du Cadran winner, and Gregory, a course and distance winner who won by eleven lengths last time, are the two with the strongest claims in the betting.🟡 🟡14:05 PRINCE OF INDIA 14/1 in the Qatar Racing British Champions Sprint Stakes, a Group 1 over six furlongs, and the trends in this race are unusual enough to be worth stating first. Only three of the last twelve favourites won it. Only two winners had won last time, while eight had been placed. And five came through the Haydock Sprint Cup without one of them having won it, which is worth knowing with the Sprint Cup winner Almeraq at the top of the market. Prince Of India was beaten three quarters of a length into second in the Bengough Stakes over this course and distance fourteen days ago, in cheekpieces for the first time and pulling hard early. Before that he won a Listed race at Newmarket by two lengths, leading after a furlong, and before that he was second to Coppull in the Hungerford Stakes at Newbury, where Marco Botti felt he was on the wrong side of the track. He has already won over this course and distance, and Botti says he likes fast ground and that a stiff six furlongs is his best trip, which is exactly what tomorrow gives him. Bred For The Trip has him through Wootton Bassett, short of our bar. Pat Dobbs rides. He is rated 111, a pound below the level ten of twelve winners reached, and he has never won a Group race, which ten of twelve had. Kind Of Blue won this race two years ago and Samangan won the Prix Maurice de Gheest, so it is deep. At 14/1 with three