Heat is on the great Enable in King George

The entire point of judiciously employing the term “great” is to save it for things that truly merit the description, to make sure “great” still means something.

Well, here is a real chance to let it rip, as the great Enable takes to the races again Saturday at Ascot in the Group 1 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes.

Twelve races, 11 wins, a 10-race win streak, eight Group 1’s, two Arcs, the only horse to win the Arc and the Breeders’ Cup Turf in the same season – yep, that seems to qualify Enable in the pantheon of greatness.

Yet as England swelters under a heat wave this week, many still are hot to take on Enable, with 10 entered against her in this 1 1/2-mile fixture that’s a part of the Breeders’ Cup Challenge Win and You’re In series, gifting the winner a fees-paid guaranteed berth in the BC Turf plus travel expenses to California.

Perhaps we will see Enable there this November in her swan song, or if in October she becomes the first horse to win the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe three times, perhaps that will mark her final trip to post.

Regardless, any Enable race at this point is a must watch, and the 1 1/2 -mile King George has a scheduled post time of 10:40 a.m. Eastern on Saturday.

Enable won this race two summers ago as a 3-year-old filly, getting 15 pounds from the older male who finished second, Ulysses. Saturday, she gets three pounds from the race’s strong second choice, Crystal Ocean, but concedes eight to the general third favorite, English Derby winner Anthony Van Dyck, who gets a 3-year-old allowance.

Crystal Ocean always has been a good horse but during 2019 has risen to a new peak, winning all three of his starts, including a last-out course-and-distance score in the Princes of Wales’s Stakes in late June, when he beat Magical, runner-up to Enable in the 2018 BC Turf. Enable thrashed Crystal Ocean over the all-weather track at Kempton last season, but the margin between them is closer than that race.

Anthony Van Dyck followed up on his Derby win at Epsom by taking a six-length spanking from longshot winner Sovereign in the Irish Derby. The jury still is out regarding how this year’s 3-year-old class stacks up against older rivals.

Enable, for her part, didn’t look anything close to dead fit when she handed Magical a three-quarter-length defeat in the July 6 Eclipse Stakes. That 1 1/4-mile race fell short of Enable’s best distance, and she figures to come into Saturday’s race looking more svelte. All signs point to another great performance.