Kevin Blake's Saturday Racing Tips: Mishriff to reign supreme in King George

Group 1 action returns to England this Saturday with the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Qipco Stakes taking centre stage on an excellent card at Ascot and hopefully we can pull a winner or two out of the fray.

Trip, ground and track look ideal for Tactical

The Moet & Chandon International Stakes (15:00) is without question the most competitive contest of the entire weekend, but great challenges tend to have great rewards, so we'll have a crack at it with a familiar face in Tactical.

The Andrew Balding-trained four-year-old already has plenty of trophies in the bag having won the Windsor Castle Stakes at Royal Ascot and the July Stakes at Newmarket as a juvenile prior to winning the Free Handicap at Newmarket as a three-year-old, but he hasn't won since that last-named victory and has been something of a frustration.

His connections have tried him over a variety of trips from six furlongs up to a mile, but my view is that seven furlongs might well be the Goldilocks trip that is just right for him.

With that in mind, I thought he'd run a big race when returned to that trip in the Buckingham Palace Stakes at Royal Ascot and he duly did, but he didn't get the clearest run and seemed to be in the wrong part of the track on the day, so his big effort was only enough to see him finish a close sixth.

His connections elected to send him back up to a mile for the Group 2 Summer Mile Stakes at this track last time and while that decision can be read as an endorsement that they still believe he is as good as ever, a mile stretches him and he ran as well as could be expected in the face of a stiff task.

The return to a big-field handicap over this trip on fast ground is just what he wants.

The pace map for this race would suggest that his low draw in stall two isn't ideal and maybe it won't be, but we've seen apparent track biases get turned on their head so much on the straight track at Ascot in recent times that I don't think anyone can ever be too bullish about where is best, if anywhere.

Hopefully Tactical gets luck in running and if he does, he should be in the mix at the finish.

Mishriff can prove the market wrong

The main event is the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Qipco Stakes (15:35). It has attracted a field of six proper Group 1 horses and it promises to be a scintillating contest.

The hope is always that this race brings together the pick of the middle-distance three-year-olds and the established older stars and this renewal certainly delivers, with the three-year-olds being represented by both a top colt and a filly.

The market is giving a huge amount of respect to the younger brigade in Westover and Emily Upjohn, but I don't think the market has it right. They might well be proper ones, but the older horses set the bar high and the one I think will make them all work is the John Gosden-trained Mishriff.

The five-year-old has been established as a top-class international Group 1 performer for over two years now and he was genuinely unlucky not to win the Eclipse Stakes at Sandown last time when beaten a neck by Vadeni after meeting serious trouble in running.

There seems to be a popular view that he is better at a mile-and-a-quarter than a mile-and-a-half, but winning the Dubai Sheema Classic and finishing a fine second to Adayar in last year's renewal of this race is hardly a bad return for his two tries at the trip.

For whatever reason, the market isn't respecting Mishriff, but I think he might well prove them wrong out on the track on Saturday.