Ebor Festival — A meeting to savour

The four day Yorkshire Ebor Festival takes place from Wednesday 21st August to Saturday 24th August at York Racecourse and is always one of the highlights of the summer flat racing season.

The opening day features the Group 1 Juddmonte International which boasts a recent roll of honour that includes such greats at Sea The Stars (2009) and Frankel (2012).

Last year’s winner of the race, Roaring Lion, is recovering from a colic operation and will be unable to defend his crown. The current market is headed by Crystal Ocean at odds of 11/8 with 888 racing betting.

This five-year-old son of Sea The Stars ran his best race to date when going down by a neck in a thrilling finish with super mare Enable at Ascot last month.

Despite the absence of Enable this time, Crystal Ocean won’t have things all his own way as he is likely to face stiff opposition from the Aidan O’Brien trained Magical. There was just over one length between the pair when they clashed in the Prince Of Wales stakes at Royal Ascot in June. On that occasion Magical might have finished a little closer but for receiving a bump in the straight.

Thursday at York is Ladies Day and features the Group 1 Yorkshire Oaks won two years ago by Enable. The dual Arc winner is set to run again as a prep race in her bid for a record breaking third victory in Paris in October.

There doesn’t appear to be another mare in training capable of beating Enable and bookmakers are taking no chances offering odds of 1/5 about her winning this race for a second time.

Friday is the turn of the sprinters when the feature event is the Group 1 Coolmore Nunthorpe Stakes over the minimum distance of five furlongs.

The race is likely to throw up an intriguing clash between proven speedsters Battaash and Mabs Cross against the Coolmore owned Ten Sovereigns who has yet to race over five furlongs but was a revelation when an impressive winner of the Darley July Stakes over six furlongs at Newmarket last month.

Friday at York will also see Stradivarius attempt to scoop a £1 million bonus for the second year in a row by winning the Group 2 Lonsdale Cup. The five year old is unbeaten for two seasons and is odds-on to repeat the feat.

The concluding day of the Festival sees the stayers take centre stage with the one mile and six furlongs Ebor handicap.

John Gosden trained the first two home last year (Muntahaa and Weekender) but overall it may pay to follow the Irish trained runners.

Jarlath Fahey and Ger Lyons trained runners filled the minor places last year while recent Irish trained winners of the race were Heartbreak City (Tony Martin 2016) and Mutual Respect (Johnny Murtagh 2014).

Willie Mullins is normally the go-to Irish trainer when looking for the winner of these staying flat handicaps and no doubt the Champion National Hunt trainer will have had his eye on this £500,000 prize for some time.

Likely contenders from the Mullins camp include True Self which needs to bounce back from an odds-on flop in a Group 3 contest at Leopardstown last month having previous run up a hat-trick of victories at Listed level.

Buildmeupbuttercup was a facile winner of an amateur riders contest for Mullins at the Galway Festival and will have her supporters if turning up at York. She had previously finished runner-up in the marathon Ascot Stakes and both those efforts were with the aid of a tongue strap.