Poet's Word looking to validate biggest win in King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes

Poet’s Word broke through with his first major victory in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes last month at Royal Ascot. On Saturday, back at Ascot for the Group 1 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes, Poet’s Word will try to cement his still-tenuous position as Europe’s top 1 1/2-mile horse.

Even with another Poet’s Word win, that position could be short-lived with the top-level filly Enable on the way back from injury. But Poet’s Word’s path to a second straight Group 1 score became easier when Kew Gardens (minor illness) and Waldgeist (ground concerns) were taken out of the King George this week.

Cracksman, whose star Poet’s Word lowered in the Prince of Wales’s, was among the final declarations for the King George but will race only if rain forecast for Friday into Saturday indeed falls at Ascot. If the ground remains as fast as it was Thursday, trainer John Gosden will scratch Cracksman.

Cracksman had won five in a row, including three straight Group 1’s, and was an odds-on favorite in the Prince of Wales’s, but Poet’s Word handled him with relative ease, winning by 2 1/4 lengths. Cracks, in fact, already had shown in Cracksman, if one was willing to look, when he struggled to beat the unheralded Salouen in the Group 1 Coronation Cup.

If Cracksman does indeed take his spot in the starting gate Saturday, he’ll have the little-known journeyman Robert Havlin in the irons with Cracksman’s regular jockey, Frankie Dettori, serving a suspension.

The Michael Stoute-trained Poet’s Word hinted at Group 1 competence for the better part of a year without ever actually hitting that mark. The 5-year-old never had even won above the Group 3 level before the Prince of Wales’s, and his success there might have had as much to do with Cracksman’s surprising decline as Poet’s Word’s rise.

Poet’s Word, to be ridden by James Doyle, probably has a horse from his own stable, Crystal Ocean, as his main rival. Crystal Ocean, a later-developing 4-year-old, was not quite there during a solid 2017 campaign, but he comes into the King George having won all three of his starts this year, including an easy victory over 1 1/2 miles at Ascot in the Group 2 Hardwicke last out.

Post time for the King George is 10:40 a.m. Eastern. The race is a Breeders’ Cup Challenge Win and You’re In qualifier for the Turf in November.

◗ The Group 2 York Stakes typically produces a runner or two for the Arlington Million, but with the Million coming a week earlier than usual this year, it remains to be seen if anything from Saturday’s York heads overseas. Brorocco and Thundering Blue are the two who have been mentioned as Million possibles, but Elarqam and Smart Call are the two favorites in the left-turning race over just more than 1 1/4 miles.