Dubai Golden Horn and The Grey Gatsby, winners of the last two runnings of the Dante Stakes (G1), square off in Saturday’s renewal of the £450,000 (Dh2.5 million) Coral-Eclipse Stakes at Sandown Park in the UK.

Trained by in-form handler John Gosden, Golden Horn comes into the race on the back of his authoritative victory in last month’s Epsom Derby (G1).

The son of Cape Cross is yet to sample defeat in four career starts and a victory in the Eclipse will propel his earnings to over £1.2 million.

The Grey Gatsby was only beaten a short-head by Free Eagle in the Prince Of Wales’s Stakes (G1) at Royal Ascot last month and appears to have the best credentials among the four horses who have opted to test Golden Horn’s Classic winning ability.

An impressive winner of the Irish Champion Stakes (G1) last season, Kevin Ryan’s charge will be hoping to call on all his experience and spring a surprise in the 2,000 metre contest which represent the first major opportunity for three-year-olds to take on their older rivals.

Gosden also saddles Western Hymn while Aidan O’Brien relies on Queen Anne Stakes (G1) third Cougar Mountain as he seeks a sixth Eclipse trophy.

Gosden is never one to take anything for granted and acknowledges that the Eclipse represents Golden Horn’s coming-of-age race.

“I think the odds are a little bit unusual and I don’t think they’re representative of the chances the other horses have,” he said in the Sportinglife.

“I’ve no illusions about it. It’s a mile and a quarter on a track that can favour front-runners and against older horses. I’ve bags of respect for those horses and nothing is a given.”

“He has a good constitution - his favourite two occupations are eating and sleeping. There’s no harm in that. He’s quite relaxed and quite lazy sometimes in his work. He’s lazy in his races sometimes as well, but he’s a grand horse.”

Gosden, who won this race in 2012 with Nathaniel, added: “Any horse can get beaten, it happened to Nijinsky, Kingman in the Guineas. I’m never going to let that worry me.

“If the horse’s ability is there and they’re in good form and come out of their races well, that matters to a trainer probably more than anything else.”

Godolphin, who have won the Eclipse four times in the past are without a representive this year, but stable jockey James Doyle partners Gosden’s Western Hymn, who was third in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes.

“A lot of respect has to be given to the top two in the market (Golden Horn and The Grey Gatsby),” he said. “My fellow loves the track and the trip, he has just got to prove himself at that level,” said Doyle.

“If the race does become tactical, which it could given the small field, it might help Western Hymn as he has got a great cruising speed and turn of foot.”

Andrew Balding’s dual course winner Tullius is a 66/1 outsider, and his handler is under no illusions about the enormity of the task his seven-year-old faces.

“Obviously he’s got a mountain to climb to be even making the first three, but it’s good prize-money for the places and he’s a very consistent horse that likes Sandown,” said the handler who saddled Bonfire to finish sixth behind Nathaniel three years ago.

“Any rain that we get will help him, but I think he’d need mountains of rain to give him anything other than a minor place chance,” he said.

“He’s a Group Two winner and he’s Group One placed. The only trouble with him is he’s a soft ground horse, otherwise he’d hardly have run in Europe.

“He’s a grand horse and has won us a lot of prize-money and hasn’t finished yet.”