King George preview: Auguste Rodin, King of Steel and Hukum star in Ascot showpiece
You learn quickly in this game that it very rarely follows the script.
It’s been nearly two decades since I first started following the sport and already I’ve lost count of the number of times it’s failed to deliver what it promised on the big days, the sort of occasions which piqued my interest in the first place.
Last year’s Champion Stakes is one of the most recent examples that immediately springs to mind, a race the hitherto unbeaten Baaeed was long odds on to win on his final appearance on a racecourse before heading into retirement.
As it turned out, Baaeed was below his best and finished only fourth behind Bay Bridge, who served up a thrilling battle with Adayar but not the sort of ‘I was there’ moment I’d been hoping for when I embarked on the journey to Ascot that morning.
It’s the same journey I’ll be making this Saturday, remarkably with my boyhood enthusiasm for what the day has in store still very much intact.
You’d think I’d know better by now, but then I’ve never known a renewal of the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes as strong as this one looks on paper.
Surely, this is a race which can’t fail to deliver. It might lack a horse of Baaeed’s outstanding quality, but it more than makes up for that with its strength in depth from top to bottom, a King George greater than the sum of its parts.
11 horses featured in the final declarations on Thursday – the joint-largest field for the race since Azamour beat 11 rivals in 2005 – and that’s despite the fact four dropped out at the final forfeit stage, including the 2022 Derby winner Desert Crown, ruled out at the eleventh hour with a leg infection.
Desert Crown will obviously be missed for the King George’s winningmost trainer, Sir Michael Stoute, but it’s testament to those left behind that we’re still talking about the race in such reverent terms, a final field which includes no fewer than seven individual Group 1 winners.
Auguste Rodin spearheads three-year-old challenge
Six of those top-level winners feature in a stellar group of older horses, but it’s the rematch between the one-two from this year’s Derby, Auguste Rodin and King of Steel, which has been one of the main talking points going into the King George, both trying to strike another blow for the three-year-olds in one of the first big clashes of the generations.
Auguste Rodin has followed the Galileo route to Ascot having repeated his Derby heroics in the Irish equivalent at the Curragh earlier this month, albeit he wasn’t quite so impressive when justifying very short odds on the last occasion.
It remains to be seen whether Auguste Rodin is a colt right out of the top drawer on that showing, but then that’s essentially what the King George was created for in the first place, an opportunity to test the classic crop against their elders to find out just how good they are.
His mere presence in the line-up, plus that of King of Steel – who was returning from a long absence at Epsom and has since run out an impressive winner of the King Edward VII Stakes at Royal Ascot – is a real shot in the arm for the King George, a race which has so often failed to attract the best of the three-year-olds in recent years.
Most worryingly, there was a three-year period between 2006 and 2008 when the line-up didn’t include a runner from the classic generation at all, a trend which was repeated in both 2015 and 2020.
It’s certainly been a far cry from the 1970s, for example, when the three-year-olds were well on top during what many people remember to be a golden era for the King George, providing eight of the 10 winners.
Five of those eight – Nijinsky (1970), Mill Reef (1971), Grundy (1975), The Minstrel (1977) and Troy (1979) – had also won the Derby earlier that season, all of them goliaths of the sport.
Older horses on top in recent times
When comparing that to the King George that I know, it’s fair to say that it’s become a very different race. After all, Auguste Rodin will be trying to become only the third horse this century to complete the Derby/King George double after Galileo (2001) and Adayar (2021), while the overall head-to-head record for that period stands at 16-7 in favour of the older horses.
It will probably take a career-best performance from either Auguste Rodin or King of Steel to prevent that scoreline from becoming 17-7 on Saturday, too. That’s because the nine older horses standing in their way are such a massively accomplished bunch, the winners of 54 races between them, including 11 in Group 1 company.
Luxembourg is joint-top with fellow Ballydoyle inmate Auguste Rodin on the Group 1 count having won three apiece. His tally at the top-level includes a red-hot edition of the Irish Champion Stakes at Leopardstown in 2022, while he proved at least as good as ever when seeing off last autumn’s fun spoiler Bay Bridge on his reappearance this season in the Tattersalls Gold Cup at the Curragh.
A general 14/1 shot for Saturday’s King George, Luxembourg is the sort of horse who could easily have been challenging for favouritism in an ordinary year, while even the other two horses from Ballydoyle, Point Lonsdale and Bolshoi Ballet, currently trading at 100/1 and 150/1, respectively, have shown themselves to be smart performers in their own right.
But smart simply won’t cut it this year, not with four more classy older horses sitting between the two three-year-olds and Luxembourg in most betting lists.
Dettori bids for record-breaking King George win
They include the sole filly in the line-up, Emily Upjohn, who was simply brilliant on her return to action when showing a sparkling turn of foot to pull clear of the subsequent Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud winner Westover in the Coronation Cup at Epsom.
Both Emily Upjohn and Westover disappointed in this race 12 months ago, but the filly, in particular, looks an improved model this year as she tries to give Frankie Dettori a record-breaking eighth King George win on his final ride in the race.
Dettori was forced to miss the Eclipse at Sandown – in which Emily Upjohn was last seen chasing home star three-year-old Paddington – and Newmarket’s July Festival due to suspension, but his farewell tour has otherwise been a rare thing in this sport in that it largely has followed the script, already featuring wins in the 2000 Guineas, Oaks and Gold Cup.
There is likely to be no more popular winner of this year’s King George than if Dettori could bow out in style in one of his favourite races, though a repeat win for defending champion Pyledriver surely wouldn’t be far behind.
The antithesis of the bluebloods in the line-up such as Auguste Rodin, Pyledriver has gone from being the foal nobody wanted to the six-year-old who must now have one of the biggest fanbases of any horse in training.
His rise to stardom has been the sort of script everyone can get behind and there is good reason to believe that it hasn’t finished yet if you listen to his co-trainer, William Muir, who was bristling with confidence when I spoke to him earlier in the week.
Hukum ready to step out of Baaeed's shadow
As for Hukum, the other six-year-old in the line-up, his rise to stardom has been a slower burn than that of his year-younger brother Baaeed, but on Saturday he gets the opportunity to succeed where that horse failed by delivering his crowning moment on the Ascot stage.
Sidelined due to injury after gaining his first success in Group 1 company in last year’s Coronation Cup – beating none other than Pyledriver by over four lengths – Hukum looked at least as good as ever when seeing off the aforementioned Desert Crown on his belated return to action in the Brigadier Gerard Stakes at Sandown in May.
The King George has been Hukum’s main target ever since and, following the rain that has fallen at Ascot in recent days, he is now considered to be the biggest threat to Auguste Rodin and King of Steel at the head of the betting, the archetypal, hard-knocking older horse who will provide a thorough test of his younger rivals and their undoubted potential.
Or at least that’s how the script reads. Let’s just hope the leading players have all read their lines and can deliver on what has the makings of a King George for the ages.
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