Delacroix may be a warm favourite for Saturday’s Royal Bahrain Irish Champion Stakes but three of the pundits on the Sporting Life Racing Podcast feel Anmaat is the bet.

Billy Nash argued: “Delacroix is obviously the one to beat, his form is there for all to see, his win in the Eclipse and good second to Ombudsman at York. On either of those runs he’s the one to beat. There’s plenty of rain around in Ireland at the moment, the ground at Leopardstown will probably end up on the easy side and that won’t upset him, but it might actually help a couple of his main rivals too.

“White Birch and Anmaat both like an ease in the ground, both are coming into the race fresh and both have serious chances. I’d be slow to be backing Delacroix at the current prices and both of those horses would be suited by a well-run race.

“So, if Ballydoyle do what they say they’re going to do, which I’m not convinced they will, I think the race will set up nicely for both Anmaat and White Birch. I like Anmaat in particular, he’s run two really good races this year and we know he likes an ease in the ground. Chris Hayes has been booked, and he knows Leopardstown inside out and at the moment he’s the way I’d be leaning in the race.”

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Graham Cunningham also feels there are potential holes in the favourite and that Anmaat is the one to take advantage.

“I think this is a very important race for Ballydoyle and Delacroix, this is the race where he has to prove himself to be an Ace. He has the Eclipse win but that was a very stop-start race where I thought Ombudsman had excuses and he’s got a couple of trial wins in the spring where he got the ultimate saloon passage on the speed. He’s got the blow-out in the Derby which was excusable, and he has that York run which was again a bit of a mish-mash performance,” he reasoned.

“Like Billy I’m not sure how they will ride him here, I think he’s crying out to go a bit further forward and I’m not sure he’s quite as good as Aidan tells us he is. I’m tempted by Anmaat. I know no seven-year-old has ever won this, Swain won it as a six-year-old back in 1998, but Anmaat is not an ordinary seven-year-old. His recent figures have been his very best including that second to Ombudsman in the Prince Of Wales’s Stakes. And with the rain and his high cruising speed, I think he’s going to be really, really hard to keep out of the top three.”

Those thoughts were echoed by Ben Linfoot.

“I’m not sure how good Delacroix is. I don’t think we can take the Eclipse win at face value and my prediction with him is we might see him in the QEII at the end of the season dropping back to a mile. I’m not sure how Saturday will play out with him in mind, and I’ll also be taking him on with Anmaat.

“He goes well fresh, he loves the ground and I think he’s the one to be on. I know it’s come around in the most unfortunate of circumstances, but it might be a blessing in disguise that Chris Hayes rides too with his experience around Leopardstown.”

Fran Berry thinks Japanese raider Shin Emperor is a big threat to all, along with the unexposed Zahrann.

“Zahrann won a maiden in impressive style at Cork by a long way and backed up with a good win at Leopardstown. He just came up short at Roal Ascot but was very good on his return to action the Curragh, staying on well and looking like he’s grown up a lot,” he said.

“This is a big step up in class at this stage of his career having not run as a two-year-old, but I do think he’s a horse in time who will hold his own at the top level. He’s a horse who can be very sluggish to get going but has a really good turn of foot and the nature of the track at Leopardstown will suit him very well.

“Shin Emperor is a brother to Sottsass who looked extremely well when I saw him last week. He looks to have really matured. Connections are leaving no stones unturned. His jockey Ryusei Sakai has a couple of rides at a conventional track in Cork on Wednesday but on Thursday goes to Clonmel for one. They’re going all in on the preparation on the back of his first ride in Ireland being in this race last season.

“Yoshito Yahagi is a master at travelling horses and what this horse did last year behind Economics, I think he is a big contender providing the ground doesn’t deteriorate too much. He’s the one I’d like to be with at this stage. White Birch is an enigma, we’ve seen so little of him, but he was unlucky in the Tattersalls Gold Cup behind Los Angeles and I’d respect him.

“Back to Delacroix I have two things on him. He definitely has a quirk in him, I’ll be keen to get down to the saddling enclosure to see how he behaves.

“And we presume Christophe Soumillon is going to ride him and he’s a brilliant jockey, we all know how good he is and I rode against him, but Leopardstown is its own entity.

“Azamour in 2005 and Vadeni three years ago, they were two very ordinary rides. Then you throw in Almanzor who he won on in 2016. He’s had two races go very wrong at Leopardstown and one go very right.

“When it went right on Almanzor he went to the outside to challenge, on Vadeni he went back inside which is hard to believe. Leopardstown is not a straightforward track. I know he’ll have all the Aces stacked for him with pacemakers and the like, but I do like the fact Anmaat’s team went for local knowledge in the absence of Jim Crowley.”

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