Ombudsman’s recent breakout performance at Royal Ascot had all the hallmarks of a colt with exhilarating potential and on Saturday he could prove he’s a champion in the making in the G1 Eclipse Stakes at Sandown.
The 10-furlong contest is the first opportunity in Britain for the three-year-olds and older horses to clash in a Group 1 feature: this year has Godolphin’s 2,000 Guineas winner Ruling Court and Coolmore’s French Derby hero Camille Pissaro as the standouts from the Classic crop, with Ombudsman and France’s star turn Sosie the pick of the older horses.
Three-year-olds have won the race the last four years, but Vadeni’s win two years ago showed that trends are there to be overturned: he was the first French-trained winner since the Percy Carter-trained Javelot returned to Chantilly with the spoils in 1960.
It’s a race Godolphin has won six times, most recently with Ghaiyyath in 2020, but Ombudsman could be something of a throwback to Halling, who wore the famous blue silks to victory in 1995 and 1996.
Halling was a pure mile and a quarter specialist, a horse that developed steadily under John Gosden’s watch, winning the prestigious Cambridgeshire Handicap as a three-year-old before moving on briefly to Hilal Ibrahim in Dubai and then to Saeed bin Suroor, emerging as a formidable four-year-old, a champion at the distance who only enhanced his legacy at age five.
Ombudsman, too, has come through that same Gosden nursery, now a partnership of father and son trainers, John and Thady, but he has gone nowhere, he has remained in the Godolphin blue out of Clarehaven Stables. He matured through minor wins this time last year at Newmarket and Leicester; then nabbed a Listed win and a Group 3 in France.
“He was always a nice prospect as a young horse,” Thady Gosden said of Ombudsman. “He’s had a very steady progression. He jumped straight into Listed company on his third start but then we took our time with him, building him up with a few trips with him over to France and back. He got through those well and he’s always looked like he had the potential to turn into the horse he has at this stage.”
Since his impressive G1 Prince Of Wales’s Stakes win, there has been talk of stepping up to a mile and a half in the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes or even the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, but, like Halling all those years ago, Ombudsman shapes like 10 furlongs might be his optimum distance.
“He’s been developed quite gradually and hopefully he’s got a bright future ahead of him; he stays a mile and a quarter and he’s got a few options and we’ll have to see if he stays any further,” Gosden said, noting that the uphill run at Sandown should give some indication.
Certainly, there is speed in his genes: his sire Night Of Thunder was a top-class miler; his dam’s line traces back to the 1992 G1 Prix du Moulin winner All At Sea, a family from which horses that peaked at a mile to 10 furlongs proliferate.
Ombudsman showed he had inherited a swift acceleration at Ascot, finding open ground late, quickening sharply, and defeating by two lengths last season’s G1 Champion Stakes hero Anmaat – no slouch himself – as if he was a notch below.
“All those horses (in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes) have a very good turn of foot, but he’s got plenty of speed, he’s always had it, he’s improved every start and he stayed the mile and a quarter well,” Gosden said.
“He’s got that turn of foot and he’s got that speed that a faster surface really allows him to show, so you’d be hopeful that … there’s not much rain forecast, but hopefully it’ll be on the quick side again there.”
Anmaat is set to reoppose, as is the only horse to have finished ahead of Ombudsman in his six races, the Ed Walker-trainer Almaqam, who made all and kept on up the stiff Sandown hill to win over the course and distance in the G3 Brigadier Gerard Stakes in May.
But Gosden said that run was always “just a prep run” for Ascot and the ground that day was “perhaps a little bit dead”.
And the Eclipse is not a Royal Ascot afterthought, no strike-while-he’s-hot reaction: Sandown on Saturday has always been on the agenda and the Gosdens are sticking to it confidently.
“The plan was if he ran well enough in the Prince Of Wales it would be to come back in this,” Gosden said.
“It was always a plan,” he added. “Start him later in the season, give him an easy run into Ascot and then go from there with this in mind.” ∎
