Dubai: Irish-trained Trading Leather will bid to reward Godolphin with a record sixth victory in the £1 milliion (Dh6.26 million) King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes (G1), Britain’s most prestigious open-age flat race, which takes place at Ascot, England, on Saturday.
Trained by former King George-winning handler Jim Bolger, the 2013 Irish Derby (G1) scorer faces eight rivals in what looks to be a wide-open renewal of a 2,400m contest that pits the Classic generation against older horses.
It’s been 22-years since Jovite landed the prize for Bolger, but Trading Leather may well have genuine claims of setting the record straight after delivering some huge efforts in top races such as the Jockey Club (G2) and Coral-Eclipse Stakes (G2) this season.
Second in this race last year when beaten by five lengths by Novellist, Trading Leather’s biggest success came at The Curragh, Ireland, where he won a hot renewal of the Dubai Duty Free Irish Derby.
On his most recent start in the Eclipse at Sandown, Trading Leather finished a two-length runner-up to Mukhadram, who represents Shaikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Deputy Ruler of Dubai and Minister of Finance.
Trading Leather will once again be ridden by Bolger’s stable jockey Kevin Manning, who has partnered the son of Teofilo in all 12 career starts.
“You could make a case for basically every horse in the race. It’s a very good race,” Manning told At The Races. “He’s going there in good shape and I’m looking forward to riding him. I think he’ll put up a big show.”
Mukhadram steps up in distance to a mile and a half for the first time, with trainer William Haggas saying: “Mukhadram is fine, he is in good shape. We had a little blip last week with a minor foot problem but he seems well now.
“I have been anxious to step him up to this distance for a while but now that the day gets closer I am not so sure. Saturday will tell us everything.
“He should get his ideal conditions — a nice warm day and fast ground, which he loves — so we will just have to see what happens,” Haggas added in a British Champions Series press release.
“I haven’t had a runner in the race since Shaamit [in 1996]. In the old days it was the natural race to go on to after the Derby, but Shaamit was very sore after Epsom and had only just come back to himself in time for the King George.
“He still managed third behind two very good four-year-olds [Pentire and Classic Cliché] but if I trained him, now I would probably have waited with him.
“When I was young, the King George was the mid-summer race. As far as I’m concerned, it still is and it’s great to be part of it,” he said.
“It’s quite hard to find a horse good enough to run in it with a chance. Our stable has only recently grown in strength, and in the future we hope to be more consistent in having opportunities to take part in races like this.”
Saturday’s race looks a vintage King George with six older horses set to clash with three three-year-olds, all supplied by John Gosden.
