Fifty-five years on from when the wonderful Mill Reef won the King George and Queen Elizabeth Stakes for the late Ian Balding, on Saturday at Ascot, his son Andrew sent out Kalpana to win a stellar renewal of the race, writes Tony Stafford.
Mill Reef was a Derby winner, and now the five-year-old mare needed to beat this year’s Irish Derby hero Benvenuto Cellini and last year’s Epsom winner Lambourn to land the prize.
Not just the Aidan O’Brien colts, but also fellow five-year-old Calandagan, officially the world’s top-rated racehorse, and a gelding to boot, so one that the Aga Khan studs can continue to race with impunity as long as the legs and wind, never mind form, warrant it.
The early skirmishes featured Coolmore’s pacemaker, Action, leading Lambourn at the head of the nine-runner field. We were wondering whether Kalpana, the sole UK runner, would cope with the O’Brien quartet, principally Benvenuto Cellini and the four-year-old filly Minnie Hauk, as well as the Francis-Henri Graffard pair of Calandagan and Goliath, the two latest winners of the race, as well as a well-respected pair from Japan.
One of that Asian duo, Masquerade Ball, was strongly fancied having run Calandagan to a very close second in the Japan Cup last November before another eye-catching runner-up spot, only one length behind the world’s leading prizemoney earner Romantic Warrior at Sha Tin, Hong Kong, on his latest start in April.
So it was disconcerting to say the least when he, sporting the colours of the Shadai Race Horse Club, and outsider Wurttemberg, ridden by Oisin Murphy, were both toiling a long way behind the rest as the Ascot bell tolled to accompany the field into the straight. Wurttemberg is a homebred running in the colours of Shadai Farm’s boss Teruya Yoshida.
Masquerade Bell did move up one place past a badly weakening Minnie Hauk in the last furlong, but Wurrtemberg was allowed to coast home barely at a canter by Murphy.
The wait goes on then both for the King George and, even more agonisingly, for a Japanese winner of the Arc. Not even their late super stallion, Shadai-based Deep Impact, could achieve that objective; but you know they will keep trying.
Kalpana’s win turned around last year’s one-length defeat in the race by Calandagan. In third that day was the then seven-year-old gelding Rebel’s Romance, at three-and-a-half lengths. He followed that with an almost faultless year, the latest of 22 wins from 32 races coming in the Princess of Wales’s Stakes at the July Meeting at Newmarket a little over a fortnight ago. Godolphin announced his retirement last week.
Kalpana started her racing career relatively late, making her debut – a winning one – at Kempton in January 2024. She was ridden in that maiden race by Hayley Turner, and other jockeys to have won on her during a so-far 17-race record have been Ryan Moore, PJ McDonald, William Buick and now Juddmonte’s retained rider Colin Keane.
He took over after that second place in last year’s King George. The one anomaly of her career is that Oisin Murphy didn’t win on any of the four rides he had on her. She has eight wins, six second places and two thirds with only seventh place in last year’s Arc standing out as a substandard effort. I doubt Oisin will be getting back on Kalpana any time soon!
During an ordinary month (by their impossible standards) since Benvenuto Cellini overcame Derby winner Christmas Day at the Curragh, the Aidan O’Brien team characteristically kept going and were gratified by Benvenuto’s display on Saturday. Having been passed by Calandagan, he battled back dourly almost to catch the French star in the last furlong. Lambourn was a creditable fourth, but the rest were well beaten off.
Suggestions – Matt, are you putting words and ideas into people’s minds again? – that the Breeders’ Cup Turf would be an ideal place to show off Peter Brant’s green colours on this horse might well come to fruition, but it’s hard to see his going to Keeneland without running a time or two over here or in Ireland beforehand. The other partners will have their say on that.
So now the dust has settled, it might be time to question whether Andrew Balding’s steady but relentless rise up the trainers’ listing is set for a final push to a first UK championship. The £1.13 million purse on Saturday brought his tally for the year to £4,847,000 compared with O’Brien’s figure of £5,830,000, less than a million more.
Last year Balding had a best of £7.2 million, from 192 winners, compared to Aidan’s £8.1million. He’s already up to 120, the ninth year in a row where he has sent out more than 100 wins, and he’s at a best-ever strike rate of 21%.
It’s not just Kalpana that he can look to for big-race success either. At York on Saturday his Dante Stakes winner, Item, also running in the Juddmonte colours, strode clear of the 2025 Dante winner Pride Of Arras in the £93k Sky Bet York Stakes over the Dante 10.5-furlong trip under Rob Hornby.
Item seemed not to have stayed the Derby trip when finishing ninth to Christmas Day at Epsom, but he has surely opened up a nice avenue of races at ten furlongs for the rest of the season, leaving Kalpana to do her thing over the Classic distance that suits her so well.
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It’s easy to dismiss racing as solely for the big battalions – as just a numbers game. But, from a smaller team, William Knight is re-rewriting his own statistics this year. From the four seasons covering 2022 to 2025, he sent out eight two-year-old winners on the turf from 92 runs, with six individual winners from 38 horses.
Already this year he has matched the six individual winners from the four previous campaigns – each having won once – from nine total starts. The latest success came on Saturday evening at Lingfield where Spirit Of Lyra, a 16,000 guineas yearling buy at Tattersalls Somerville sale last year, won by almost four lengths with her head in her chest.
One of the more equitable changes to racing over the past few years has been the growth in Restricted maiden and novice races divided into Bands B, C and D depending on sale prices. Even in Band D, which Saturday’s race was, you can get the odd potentially high-class performer and, while it’s early days, this Rathmoy Stables partnership horse could be pretty decent.
It’s never been a numbers game for Lew Day, initially with a few with the late Eric Wheeler and then more recently with the smart pair Spark Plug and Raheen House with Brian Meehan, the latter moving to William Haggas before his sale to Australia.
This year’s hopes on the track rest with the three-year-old filly Rossa Raheen, and she showed terrific guts for the Ollie Sangster stable when winning at the first try at 1m4f at Salisbury on Saturday evening. Lew has a great belief in stallions Sea The Stars and Kingman. This progressive filly is by Palace Pier, a son of Kingman, out of a Sea The Stars mare
Lew can be a stubborn kind of fellow, but he knows what he believes and, as with his own small band of broodmares, is prepared to back it up with cash. He is carrying out that single-minded policy with a great chance of success.
- TS
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