champions day acot Saturday 18th

With favourable horseracing ground anticipated hopefully most of the key principals esp Field Of Gold will show up to reclaim the best miler accolade. I'm also looking forward to the anticipated clash between Ombudsman, Delacroix and Calandagan; Trawlerman has the Long Distance at his mercy.

Anyone know if Fallen Angel is going for the QE11 ?

according to attheraces she is its on their site.

Yep Fallen Angel (a definite) in the QE2, and Delacroix (still in it) despite the comment from AOB on saturday.

A double for me: Field Of Gold (2/1) and Ombudsman (15/8) - both with 'billy'. I hope at least 1 can oblige esp FoG to reaffirm his superiority over 8f; Omb to sock it to AOB for repeatedly "hyping" his charges. The rest are rather merely academic and inconsequential going forward.

At this late stage of the season it's easy to know the fastest horse in a race. If only it were so simple, Trawlerman, Words Of Truth, Lazzat, Kalpana and Fields Of Gold would be winning the first five races, but a long season, some disappointing last time efforts or hard races last time mean many of those runners are vulnerable and it's possible they will be beaten today by usually inferior horses.

I have hopes that it won't be the case with the Champion Stakes. Delacroix has had a busy season but I make his latest effort his fastest yet. I have him up 5lbs so there's every chance he could reproduce his best again today. However, I reckon he'll need to improve a similar amount again to trouble the best older horses. For me, Calandagan's best run this year was in defeat to Jan Brueghel, who appears to have massively deteriorated after that effort. Calandagan didn't need to improve to beat the overrated Aventure, or in the steadily run King George.

Strictly on figures I have Ombudsman only the equal of Calandagan, but after he won the POW I said I thought he could be better than the bare result. There were excuses on account of the false pace in his last two races for him not being able to show that improvement. I still don't know for sure if he is better than the bare POW form but I'm willing to back him to prove it today with a truer run race on the cards. Actually this season I haven't rated any performance by an older horse in-keeping with a usual Gp1 winning effort, but I hope Ombudsman changes that today.

Calandagan won fair and square, and I was wrong to think Ombudsman might be a bit better than his POW win. My first reaction was that Calandagan had probably matched his previous best today, with Ombudsman regressing a little. However, a quick comparison of the times indicates that, for me, Calandagan ran his best race to date, up around 3lbs. He may have physically improved again or it could be that he's actually a bit better at 10f than 12f.

I think Calandagan had a better position than Ombudsman throughout. Ombudsman just could not make up the deficit it gave to Calandagan.

He wasn't that far off the Wnr throughout the race & was upsides him 2F out.
Btn over 2Ls,Buick gave him every chance.