Ombudsman set for Breeders’ Cup finale
Joint-trainer John Gosden confirms Champion Stakes winner on course for Keeneland.
John Gosden has confirmed his brilliant Champion Stakes hero Ombudsman is on course for a potential swansong at the Breeders’ Cup on Saturday week.
A dual winner of the Prince of Wales’s Stakes at Royal Ascot and runner-up to Calandagan on Champions Day last season, the Godolphin-owned five-year-old turned the tables on Francis-Henri Graffard’s globetrotting star with a sensational display in front of a bumper crowd on his return to Berkshire over the weekend.
Now a five-time Group One winner having also struck gold in last season’s Juddmonte International and the Dubai Turf earlier this year, Ombudsman is set to begin a lucrative career at stud in 2027, but not before an exciting tilt at the Breeders’ Cup Turf at Keeneland.
“He’s been entered for the Breeders’ Cup this morning,” Gosden told the Press Association on Monday. “He’s in good order from Ascot and we’re taking a look at the Breeders’ Cup Turf with him.
“We’ll see, the horse has taken his race very well. Interestingly enough he gets an invitation to run, a sort of free entry – a ‘win and you’re in’ I think it’s called – for winning at both (Royal) Ascot and there (Champion Stakes).
“It’s a nice invitation and we’re right to take a good look at it.”
Ombudsman is the 6-4 favourite to successfully step up to a mile and a half for the first time in the Breeders’ Cup Turf, with Aidan O’Brien’s multiple Group One-winning filly Diamond Necklace – last seen finishing third in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe – rated his biggest threat at 5-2.