King´s Stand Stakes

The Ascot officials have gone to great trouble and expense to encourage more foreign runners to run at the royal meeting, and they have been rewarded with a truly international field for the King´ s Stand Stakes (Group One, 5 furlongs, 16.05 CET). 19 runners with 8 different countries represented, including the only German runner of the week, Rupert Plersch´s War Artist, who is now trained at Röttgen by Markus Klug and will be partnered as always by Olivier Peslier. He certainly has a chance based in his excellent Dubai form - when he was only beaten a head by JJ the Jet Plane, and he also finished runner-up here in 2008 to Kingsgate Native (Sir Michael Stoute/ Ryan Moore); however the weekend´s rain has not helped. Kingsgate Native in our view looks the best -indeed the only - chance of a home win and we certainly expect him to reverse Haydock form with Irish hope Sole Power (Eddie Lynam/ Wayne Lordan), another one that would prefer firmer going.

Well beaten in the Temple Stakes was the "Budapest bullet", Overdose (Josef Roszival/ Andreas Suborics), but the easier going will suit him better and he may be able to come back to his best form here - but will need to.
However we expect one of the more exotic runners to win- either the Americans Bridgetown (Todd Pletcher/ John Velasquez) and Holiday for Kitten (Wesley Ward/ Joel Rosario), the Hong Kong runner Sweet Sanette (Tony Millard/ Jamie Spencer) and especially the Australian Star Witness (Danny O´Brien/ Steven Arnold). Australian sprinters are regarded as the best in the world and have won this race 4 times this century. Star Witness is not a patch on their star sprinter Black Caviar, but even the third-best Australian might be good enough to win here.