Last year’s race

• Winner: Sweet William
• Jockey: Robert Havlin
• Trainer: John & Thady Gosden
• Owner: Normandie Stud Ltd
• Age: 6 Weight: 9st 7lbs
• Starting Price: 10/11
• Season Form Figures: 3432
• Previous Best: 1st - Betfred Howard Wright Doncaster Cup Stakes (Group 2), Doncaster (September 2024)

By Paul Jones

Despite Trueshan getting turned over at odds of 2/9 in 2022, punters have had a very good time of it with horses starting in the first three in the betting winning the Doncaster Cup for all but one of the last 24 runnings (one of which dead-heated with a 14/1 shot), and particularly punters who combined that with a contender that ran in the Lonsdale Cup at the York Ebor Meeting.

Although the Lonsdale Cup is run over a 2f shorter distance, it has been the pivotal guide as that Group 2 prize at York last month has featured 14 of the last 22 Doncaster Cup winners. On two of the eight occasions when that was not the case since 2003, the Lonsdale Cup winner finished second here.

Even more to the point, eight of the 13 most recent Doncaster Cup winners that contested the Lonsdale Cup were also successful at York (Boreas, Millenary, Sergeant Cecil, Septimus, Askar Tau, Times Up and Stradivarius (x2)). This season’s Lonsdale Cup was won by Al Nayyir beating Illinois and Mount Atlas.

The Ascot Gold Cup is the second-best guide as 13 of the last 30 Doncaster Cup winners took their chance in the premier race for stayers over an extra quarter-mile but found this Grade-lower contest over a shorter distance more to their liking, though I would only argue that is par for the course. More interesting is that class has shone through more often than not of late with 20 of the last 30 winners having won a Group 2 race or better earlier in the career, so many winners were defying a penalty.

Unlike in the Ascot Gold Cup, age is certainly no barrier to success in the Doncaster Cup. As many as seven seven-year-olds (Times Up, Sergeant Cecil, Boreas, Millenary, Sheikhzayedroad, Stradivarius and Trueshan), two eight-year-olds (Millenary again and Thomas Hobson) and Persian Punch at the age of 10 have won since 2003. In addition, four of the last 176 runnings have been won by six-year-olds (Samuel, Times Up, Pallasator and last year's dual winner Sweet William).

Alleluia, Saddler’s Rock and Desert Skyline have won the Doncaster Cup aged three since Weld back in 1989 (and 18 since 1900) but they have hardly been laden with runners and have actually fared very well with those that have taken their chance, which also includes three seconds and two thirds from just 13 contenders going back to 1989.

The Irish have won four times from few runners since 2007 and in 2018 the Mullins-Ricci pair of Thomas Hobson and Max Dynamite finished 1-2. Aidan O’Brien has saddled two winners and a runner-up from his eight runners.

Surprisingly given their successes in other Cup races, Godolphin have yet to win the Doncaster Cup but just five runners in the last 24 years goes a long way to explaining why.