Leading Light goes for gold in Ascot showpiece

The Ascot Gold Cup has presented many challenges over its 206-year history but today's centrepiece provides a test of courage for punters over whether or not to bet on Leading Light making Aidan O'Brien the most successful trainer in that long tradition.

With five winners to date, topped by Yeats's unique achievement in winning four years running, O'Brien shares the record with seven others, including Saeed Bin Suroor who saddles Ahzeemah. Another piece of racing history beckons for Ireland's champion trainer.

If Yeats was freakish, then Leading Light presents a scenario more similar to O’Brien’s 2011 winner, Fame And Glory – a classic winner asked to stretch his stamina to two-and-a-half miles and with a massive edge on quality if managing to do so.

No one can doubt Leading Light is the class act today. The Leger winner has been beaten only once in his last seven starts and that was in the Arc. Even horses as accomplished as the royal title-holder Estimate and proven Group One winners such as Tac de Boistron, Altano and Royal Diamond can’t be said to possess that quality.

Suitable profile And in many respects Leading Light looks an even more likely candidate for this race than Fame And Glory was, having won the two-mile Queens Vase last year

and putting Royal Diamond in his place in the Vintage Crop Stakes at Navan last month.

He is the top Irish hope among a seven-strong raiding party that also includes dual-purpose mare Missunited and Simenon.

But the nagging doubt is the extra half mile that has caught out “good things” in the past and some evidence that Ballydoyle’s stable form is uneven.

There is no better stage to change that than Ascot and the trainer’s son Joseph was optimistic yesterday.

“You can’t be confident of a horse getting two-and-a-half miles until they do it,” he said. “But if he gets the tip you’d imagine he’d have a massive chance.”

Considering he is out of a five-furlong Queen Mary winner there is no reassurance in pedigree terms, but that's the quandary.

Before that the Ballydoyle team start The Great War in the Norfolk where he takes on American challenger To Be Determined.

Bracelet is the O’Brien number one in the Ribblesdale and a mile-and-a-half should suit the Montjeu filly. But the evidence suggests the French fillies are superior this year and Vazira is bred to appreciate it the fast ground.