The Champion Stakes at Ascot, the highlight of the track’s Champions Day card this weekend, has barely figured in the official annual assessment of the “World’s Best Horse Race” since the prize – which is based on the average end-of-year rating of the first four horses home – was first awarded in 2015.
The 2022 Champion, in which Bay Bridge beat Adayar with the previously unbeaten Baaeed fourth, was the runner-up behind Flightline’s sign-off win in the Breeders’ Cup Classic a couple of weeks later, but five of the past 10 runnings have failed to make even the top 10 globally. To date, York’s International Stakes, in 2020 and 2024, is the only British race to finish at the top of the pile.
Ascot’s executives will quietly fancy their chances this year, however, after three of the top 12 horses worldwide at any distance all stood their ground for Saturday’s £1.3m Champion Stakes at Monday’s five-day stage.
Ombudsman, currently top of the global rankings on 128 thanks to his emphatic success in the International Stakes in August, faces a decider in his head-to-head with Delacroix, who beat him in the Eclipse and went on to win the Irish Champion Stakes. But it is far from a two-horse race with Calandagan, the King George winner, and Almaqam, the only horse apart from Delacroix to beat Ombudsman this year, also in the mix alongside William Haggas’s Economics, the Irish Champion Stakes winner last year.
The best news of all for racegoers and armchair fans alike, meanwhile, is that the weather forecast remains dry and settled before a Champions Day card that will feature five Group One races for the first time, following the upgrade of the Long Distance Cup from Group Two status.
It is also a seven-race card for the first time this year, following the addition of a £250,000 two-year-old contest as the opening race, and all five Group Ones received supplementary entries on Monday as owners and trainers were encouraged by the prospect of decent racing ground and, in the case of the three events on the round course, the certainty that there will be no switch to the hurdles track, a last resort that has been forced on the track three times since 2019.
Delacroix, ridden by Christophe Soumillon (left), on the way to winning the Irish Champion Stakes at Leopardstown in September 2025. Photograph: Damien Eagers/PA
The Champions Day card this year will be the 15th since the Champion Stakes itself was moved from Newmarket – amid much grumbling from the traditional wing of racing’s fanbase – to be the climax of Britain’s richest day at the races, and an equivalent of Champions Weekend in Ireland and Arc weekend in Paris in the nation that gave racing to the world.
It was mightily blessed by the presence of Frankel in both its inaugural year in 2011 and then a year later, when the greatest horse of modern times bowed out in the feature event. There were just two Group Ones on the schedule until the Fillies & Mares event got an upgrade in 2013, and the Sprint became the card’s fourth Group One two years later, but Saturday’s seven-race card is arguably the first with the full range and depth of quality to stand serious comparison with the showpiece meetings in France and Ireland.
Quick Guide
Greg Wood’s Tuesday racing tips
Show
Lingfield Park 1.30 Manila Mist 2.00 Hashtagnotions 2.30 Eternal Solace 3.00 Kilkenny Warrior 3.30 Baikal 4.00 Saxonia 4.31 Spitzbergen 5.05 Forever My Prince 5.40 Hedge Fund (nb)
Leicester 1.44 Supreme Dancer 2.14 Storm Esme 2.44 Figjam 3.14 Amused 3.44 Song N Dance 4.14 Platinum Prince 4.44 Sixtygeesbaby (nap) 5.15 Guinness Lad
Market Rasen 1.51 Un Sens A La Vie 2.21 Country Park 2.51 Indemnity 3.21Tankardstown Diva 3.51 Lunar Discovery 4.21 Independent Jimmy 4.55 Luna Grace
Newcastle 4.50 Alobayyah 5.25 Up The Jazz 6.00 Starmade 6.30 Fizzy Cristal 7.00 Rain Cap 7.30 Medway Queen 8.00 Raatea 8.30 Second Fiddle
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And in a good year, like this one, it certainly holds its own. In addition to the star-studded Champion Stakes, the likely attractions on Saturday include Field Of Gold, joint-second in the global rankings, in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes, and Lazzat, second in the sprint ratings, in the Champions Sprint. Trawlerman, meanwhile, is officially the world’s best stayer this year, and should prove the point in what is, admittedly, a slightly underwhelming six-horse field for the Long Distance Cup.
The problem that still faces Champions Day, however, even in what could now be seen as its fully fledged form, is that key factors which determine its year-to-year success are beyond the organisers’ control. It is still sandwiched uncomfortably between the Arc and the Breeders’ Cup, both of which offer significantly high prize money, while the latter event at least comes with an effective guarantee of fast ground.
At Ascot in mid-October, by contrast, 12 of the 14 renewals of the Champion Stakes since the switch from Newmarket have been run on ground with “soft” in the going description.
The Irish Champions Festival in Ireland attracted 20,000 spectators over two days this year, around 10,000 fewer than Ascot will get on Saturday. Yet it remains firmly entrenched on the September weekend that, in an ideal world, Champions Day would probably occupy, giving owners the chance to run at Ascot, Longchamp and then the Breeders’ Cup.
Fair play to Ireland – they got there first. But it is also another reason why we should appreciate Saturday’s exceptional Champions Day programme all the more – because it could be a long wait before the stars align in quite the same way again.
