Like the nights drawing in, the leaves falling from the trees and kids going back to school, so the St Leger Festival also plays its part in letting us know that the Great British Summer™ is about to end.
The festival, which is ran at Doncaster, takes place from September 7-10 and features a number of outstanding Group 1 renewals including the final classic of the flat racing campaign; the St Leger Stakes.
The meeting kicks off on Wednesday with Legends Day, which features the now highly-anticipated Legends Race where stars of the saddle from yesteryear, including Tony McCoy, compete for honours and to raise money for Jack Berry House, a facility that aids injured jockeys. The standout feature race is the Scarborough Stakes, a Class 1 5f affair that kickstarts the festival at 3pm.
Thursday is Ladies Day – always a highlight – and lays claim to being ‘one of South Yorkshire’s biggest social occasions’….make of that what you will. It’s another decent day of racing however, with the DFS Park Hill Stakes taking centre stage. Last year’s St Leger winner Simple Verse heads the market although Alyssa, with three wins from her last three, must be a worthy contender.
The penultimate day of the St Leger Festival offers a seven-race card headlined by the Quipco British Champions’ Series finale that is the Doncaster Cup, which this year is celebrating its 250-year anniversary and remains the oldest race run under the conditions of the Rules of Horse Racing.
The Class 1 Champagne Stakes provides the entrée on Saturday for the main dish: the St Leger Stakes. The old saying goes that ‘The fastest horse wins the Guineas; the luckiest the Derby – and the best horse wins the St Leger.’ The world’s oldest classic has acted as confirmation for some of the planet’s best flat stayers, including Kingston Hill, Mustafaweq and of course Nijinsky. This is final classic of the season and third leg of the English Triple Crown, following the 2000 Guineas and Investec Derby earlier in the year.
St Leger Stakes Betting Tips
Class, stamina and a winning pedigree are all integral to a St Leger Stakes winners’ arsenal, and the market favourite Idaho has all three in spades.
Typically, this renewal favours classy operators, as most former champions here have placed in a feature Group race before, with the English and Irish Derbies the perfect first port of call.
The one mile, six furlong distance separates the men from the boys, with most St Leger champs having won over the mark at some point in their career prior to taking to the Doncaster track.
Trained by the prolific Adrian O’Brien and sired by former English and Irish Derby winner Galileo, Idaho comes to this meeting having placed in Derbies on both sides of the water, and in his last outing in August he comfortably took the spoils in the Great Voltigeur Stakes at York.
This would represent a fifth St Leger victory for O’Brien, although he must be wary of the threat posed by the John Gosden yard and Wings of Desire in particular. The three-year-old finished runner-up in the King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes in July and was an impressive fourth in the Derby back in June.
But it is O’Brien’s colt who looks likely to lead the others at home, and this is a horse whose best work has come on good/firm ground over 12f. Priced at Evens with Coral and a litany of other bookmakers, anything odds-against is well worth a look about this proven winner.
Recommended Bets
Idaho for the St Leger Stakes (Evens with Coral)
Wings of Desire for the St Leger Stakes (14/1 each way with BetVictor)
