{"id":20055,"date":"2025-07-24T10:23:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T10:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/20055\/"},"modified":"2025-07-24T10:23:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T10:23:08","slug":"jamie-lynchs-guide-king-george-vi-and-queen-elizabeth-stakes-ascot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/20055\/","title":{"rendered":"Jamie Lynch’s guide: King George VI And Queen Elizabeth Stakes | Ascot"},"content":{"rendered":"

King Georges come in many forms, from signature performance to sudden announcement and, very rarely, a free-for-all, but at the heart of this edition is a renewed rivalry, a sequel to a blockbusting Coronation Cup. Here\u2019s an early look at the players for a must-watch race at 4.10 on Saturday<\/a>, live on Sky Sports Racing. <\/p>\n

Watch every race from King George Weekend at Ascot live on Sky Sports Racing (Sky 415 | Virgin 519) on Friday 25th and Saturday 26th July.<\/p>\n

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Some at Ballydoyle are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. If Jan Brueghel is indeed to become a great \u2013 and he has the scope to do so, if still a way to go – then it won\u2019t be by birth nor chance but achieved, and achieved the hard way, chipped and chiselled from a slab of steel and stamina, a matter of engineering, a horse built to grind and find, \u00a0\n <\/p>\n

Of the stable\u2019s four previous King George winners, he\u2019s most matched with Highland Reel, another Galileo workhorse who was greater than the sum of his parts, likewise a pre-race sweater, and he too came to the King George as a 4-y-o via the Coronation Cup. The mode and method of what Jan Brueghel did at Epsom gave rise to my nickname for him of The Fire Extinguisher, as there are few if any middle-distance horses around who bring the fire that Calandagan can, and Jan Brueghel doused him in a drawn-out duel which was stealthily stacked in his favour by virtue of the track, the ground and the servicing gallop by team-mate Continuous, the St Leger team. <\/p>\n

Before Conduit in 2008\/9, the last St Leger winner to add the following year\u2019s King George was Ballymoss in the \u2018fifties, the first big Flat horse for Vincent O\u2019Brien, a training giant on whose shoulders Aidan is standing at Ballydoyle. The conditions and configuration of Ascot, along with lessons learned from Epsom, makes for different battlelines with Calandagan for one, besides a stronger supporting cast, but the rhythmical, robotic Jan Brueghel gets a software upgrade after every race and beginning to beg the question of not how does he win but how does he get beat?\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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The high-powered Ballydoyle brute, who got first run courtesy of another Moore masterclass, was just too strong in the end, but Calandagan had run the faster in each of the prior five furlongs, in the process recording much the higher top speed. Yes, the Coronation Cup, but also the Juddmonte from last year, against City Of Troy, when both dipped under Sea The Stars\u2019s track record. <\/p>\n

No horse around, let alone in this field, could have done what Calandagan did at York that day, yet the inconvenient truth is the missing link which has prompted the uncomfortable sequence of seconds which naturally raise some doubt about his stamina or spirit or both. Stamina and spirit are the calling cards of Jan Brueghel, hence a bit of a trap was set for Calandagan in the Coronation Cup, to suppress his speed by drawing him into an advanced arm wrestle, Epsom the perfect playground for such a strategy, which ended in Calandagan waving the white flag in surrender. <\/p>\n

The Coronation Cup SPs of 8-13 Calandagan versus 10-3 Jan Brueghel told a tale of one\u2019s superior status, obviously not so coming out, but this is a different day and a different course on different ground, all of which tip the scales back towards Calandagan, more so after his confidence booster in a Ballydoyle-less Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud and the reminder of not just what he can do but also how he does it, a set of skills designed for fast ground at Ascot, highlighted when he blew us away in last year\u2019s King Edward VII.\n <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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\u00a337,259 per furlong: that\u2019s the exchange rate for a flagbearer these days. In 26 races across five seasons and six different countries, Rebel\u2019s Romance has earned over \u00a310.8m, which works out at \u00a337,259 for each of the 290 furlongs he has dutifully galloped on the track, including, don\u2019t forget, 45\u00bd furlongs on dirt in the second chapter of an amazing anthology which makes him objectively one of Godolphin\u2019s most influential horses and subjectively Charlie Appleby\u2019s best buddy, his importance intensified as he stood tall when everything else from the stable retreated from the biggest stage of all at Royal Ascot. <\/p>\n

Rebel\u2019s Romance is a great racehorse, yet he\u2019s not a racehorse of great ability, and so he can\u2019t win an elite race like the King George, can he? The answer to some extent can be found in the last three winners, as both Goliath and Pyledriver were unconsidered, either side of Hukum who was fourth-favourite and a similar price to Rebel\u2019s Romance, a reminder that when electricity fails, efficiency triumphs. And Rebel\u2019s Romance is the epitome of efficiency, albeit suckered into racing too close to the hot pace when third last year. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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Perhaps part of the consideration into retiring Bluestocking after the Arc was that Juddmonte already had the heiress apparent in Kalapana, who did what Bluestocking couldn\u2019t as a 3-y-o and win the Fillies & Mares Stakes on Champions Day, putting her 5 lb ahead of where Bluestocking was at the same stage. <\/p>\n

She may yet bloom into Bluestocking mkII because you wouldn\u2019t hold against her that she hasn\u2019t kicked on so far in 2025, in deep against some of the best boys in the Tattersalls Gold Cup before trying to give 12 lb weight-for-age to Oaks runner-up Whirl in the Pretty Polly, both over 1\u00bcm, when 1\u00bdm made a discernible difference to her last year, as it will again now. Her defining moment came on soft ground and, in the unlikely event it came up similar, you can envisage her putting it to the \u201cbig two\u201d, remembering how dominant she was last October (her last 3f was faster than Calandagan and co in the 10f Champion Stakes), though she has won twice \u2013 by wide margins \u2013 on good to firm. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\n <\/p>\n

Kalpana has definitely got the game to win a race like this at some stage. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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A Group 1 horse by proxy, considering the collateral line of not one but two victories over Delacroix as a 2-y-o, but he has come up short the twice he\u2019s had a crack at a classic, an unthreatening sixth in both the 2000 Guineas and Irish Derby, and the form of his listed win in between hardly qualifies him for a King George.\n <\/p>\n

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Once a St Leger winner, now reduced to the role of pacemaker for the newer wave of stable stars, he and Wayne Lordan getting it right for Jan Brueghel at Epsom, less so for Los Angeles at Royal Ascot. <\/p>\n

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Dual Derby winner who\u2019d set alight to the race if given the go-ahead but that\u2019s highly unlikely, this square on the Coolmore chessboard reserved for Jan Brueghel for some time. <\/p>\n

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Went one better than in the Oaks when turning away Kalpana in the Pretty Polly, a performance which raised the possibility that she may be the best in her division even over and above Minnie Hauk. But that\u2019s unlikely to be put to the test in this King George, not when the yard has Jan Brueghel ringfenced for it. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

JAMIE LYNCH’S VERDICT<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you learn from defeat, you haven\u2019t really lost.\u201d That\u2019s the mantra for CALANDAGAN as he goes into battle once again with Jan Brueghel, with lessons to be learnt from Epsom to put into practice at Ascot, under far more conducive conditions, the fact that this race is likely to be around 10 seconds faster in the completion than the Coronation Cup a significant stat for Calandagan, who can go to speeds the others can\u2019t reach. <\/p>\n

Watch every race from King George Weekend at Ascot live on Sky Sports Racing (Sky 415 | Virgin 519) on Friday 25th and Saturday 26th July.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"King Georges come in many forms, from signature performance to sudden announcement and, very rarely, a free-for-all, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20056,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[3004,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-20055","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-racing","8":"tag-racing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20055\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}