Last year’s race

• Winner: Amiloc
• Jockey: Rossa Ryan
• Trainer: Ralph Beckett
• Owner: Mrs David Aykroyd
• Age: 3 Weight: 9st 2lbs
• Starting Price: 11/8
• Season Form Figures: 11
• Previous Best: 1st - Cocked Hat Stakes (Listed), Goodwood (May 2025)

By Paul Jones

The King Edward VII Stakes (Group 2) has been a punter-friendly race with 21 of the last 32 winners starting favourite or second favourite. In fact, five of the last seven winners were sent off favourite.

Ironically, not so the world’s best middle-distance turf horse right now, though, as two years ago Calandagan ran out the most impressive winner of the meeting when giving the French their first King Edward VII winner streaking clear to win by 6l, so it’s not a race that particularly been on their radar. Being a gelding, he was ineligible for the Classics so the plan was hatched to win at Royal Ascot instead after a couple of Group 3 wins at Longchamp. Calandagan has since proven himself to be a proper Group 1 performer and you certainly can’t knock the race’s recent roll of honour as five of the last seven winners went on to win a Group 1.

Following the retirement of Sir Michael Stoute who had six wins to his credit (so three short of Sir John Porter) the Johnston and Gosden stables that have won this race three times apiece have the best record of current licence holders.

The Irish, however, have only mustered three wins in the last 50 years (all three trained by Aidan O’Brien) and one of those was in a very poor five-runner renewal. O’Brien’s Derby runners have had mixed fortunes. Japan hacked up in 2019 after going close at Epsom but Ballydoyle have been responsible for six of the last 11 losing favourites (four of which started at no bigger than 6/5), two of which ran big races in the Derby plus his At First Sight was also only fifth here as favourite in 2010 after finishing second in the Derby. Changingoftheguard did justify 11/10 favouritism for the stable in 2022 after he was fifth at Epsom, but the fellow Derby runner, Grand Alliance, really did throw it away hanging badly left late on and only beaten a short-head.

Nine winners since 1989 ran in the Derby so no real steer one way or the other there. One of those was Foyer who unseated Willie Ryan at Epsom (6f out).

Of the last 30 winners, all but six were winning a Group race for the first time and, of the last 31 winners, only nine had failed to visit the Winners' Enclosure earlier in the season. Eighteen of those winners had contested a recognised Derby trial.

As with the Ribblesdale Stakes (the fillies' equivalent of this race at Royal Ascot), proven two-year-old form counts for little. In fact, the 2014 winner, Eagle Top, was given his racecourse debut just nine weeks before he won this prize and the 2015 winner, Balios, ran only once as a two-year-old and just once beforehand in his three-year-old campaign.

So, this has proven to be very much a race for unexposed horses likely to show their true potential when sent over this distance for the first time and 26 of the last 30 winners had not previously won over 1m4f so the majority were unexposed at this trip. Five of the last nine winners had already won twice earlier in the season.