If Saturday’s action doesn’t get your heart racing, then I’m not sure what will. Ascot is the feature venue, with the Group 1 King George VI And Queen Elizabeth Stakes the main event. Won by the likes of Taghrooda, Postponed, Highland Reel, Poet’s Word and Enable in recent years, it’s always a race to savour.
This year’s field is no different, with six top class horses entered at the two-day stage. We’ll lose Wonderful Tonight if the rain doesn’t come, but even without her, it’s still an incredible field. The early favourite is Love for Aidan O’Brien and Ryan Moore, but she’ll face stern resistance from Derby winner Adayar and narrow Irish Derby second Lone Eagle.
Although they shouldn’t be treated as gospel, trends are a good guide to finding winners. They can point towards a horse who fits the profile of previous winners and we’ve taken a look at the trends for this year’s King George. All the key ones are below, including a trend’s pick for the Group 1 contest.
Unsurprisingly, it takes a top-class horse to take this Group 1 prize. All of the last ten winners had an adjusted RPR of at least 128, which is no surprise when you look at the calibre of horse who have taken the prize. Love (134), Adayar (130), Mishriff (130) and Wonderful Tonight (130) are the horses who fit the bill.
Form over the twelve-furlong distance is also essential, with the last ten winners all having won over it in the past. That doesn’t rule out any of this year’s field, but it’s perhaps interesting to note this will be only the second attempt over the trip for Adayar and Mishriff.
Just two previous winners were winning their maiden Group 1 when landing the King George. That isn’t good news for Lone Eagle, though his sole Group 1 attempt thus far was that narrow defeat in the Irish Derby. In terms of the rest of the field, this is how they stack up in terms of Group 1 victories:
Seven winners were rated within 6lbs of the top-rated horse, with four of those being top-rated themselves. Love is the one to beat on RPR ratings on 134, with Adayar, Mishriff and Wonderful Tonight rated within four pounds of her. On this trend, the chances of Lone Eagle and Broome are dented.
Several of these meet all of the trends, but given the good record of fillies in the race, Love is the one to side with from a trends perspective. She’ll arrive to Ascot having won her last four races, all at Group 1 level. Latterly, she won the Prince Of Wales’s at Royal Ascot off a significant layoff over an inadequate ten furlongs.
Although that success wasn’t visually impressive, she’ll be a different proposition here and is ultimately the one to beat.
If you back any of our selections you can watch them live on the free Racing Post app or racingpost.com. Simply log in to one of your bookmaker accounts and click ‘Watch live’ on the racecards.