O'Brien triple-teams Enable in King George

The boys, three of them, all trained by Aidan O’Brien, will try to beat Enable on Saturday at Ascot.

The race, an historic Group 1, is the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes; it has only four entrants, one of them the queen of European middle-distance racing.

Enable was beaten 2 ½ lengths in her 6-year-old debut, the Eclipse Stakes on July 5 at Sandown, by Ghaiyyath, a runner-up finish without shame. Ghaiyyath is better than any of the trio Enable faces Saturday, stretching from the 1 1/4 miles of the Group 1 Eclipse to the King George’s 1 1/2 miles, and Enable, too, should be better now than she was three weeks ago.

Racing for the first time since her bid to become the first three-time winner of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in October, Enable, as was apparent to anyone taking the time to glance at the mare, lacked true race fitness, and in Ghaiyyath she ran into a late-blooming, front-running force going as well so far in 2020 as any horse on the planet. Her belly might have looked slightly more rotund than ideal but Enable showed the competitive fire in that belly still burned, doing her best to run down Ghaiyyath on a day when her best wasn’t good enough.

Enable now has lost two straight races to go alongside with 13 wins from her 16 starts. Trainer John Gosden, jockey Frankie Dettori, and owner-breeder Khalid Abdullah obviously would’ve liked to see Enable return a winner this year, but her connections’ goal always has been to get to the Arc in the best possible shape, and the Eclipse set her on that path.

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Enable seeks her third King George. She didn’t make her first start of 2018 until well after the race had been run, but landed last year’s renewal by a measured neck over the estimable Crystal Ocean and won the 2017 edition by more than four lengths.

Enable’s challenge Saturday in a Breeders’ Cup “Win and You’re In” race offering automatic, fees-paid entry into the BC Turf, comes from the fact her opposition is a three-headed monster, the trio of O’Brien-trained runners likely to do their best to make things difficult for the mare. Ryan Moore rides Japan, who has the best chance of beating Enable, though he was unable to do so, finishing third just behind her, in the Eclipse. Anthony Van Dyck ran one of his better races when second to Ghaiyyath in the Coronation Cup at Newmarket on June 5 but floundered over a soft Ascot course finishing fifth in the Group 2 Hardwicke Stakes. Sovereign upset the Irish Derby last year at 33-1 and is the likely pacesetter over a course rated good as of Thursday but expected to take some raceday rain.

Enable can handle some rain, and she can handle her three foes and win her third King George.