Royal Ascot 2014: One to pounce in the Gold Cup

Keith Melrose
13 June 2014

Brown Panther winning the Goodwood Cup

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Keith Melrose looks towards the Thursday feature at Royal Ascot.

"Brown Panther is deservedly nominated as the main danger; is Leading Light almost three times as likely to win?"

In ratings terms there was actually a better performance in the Ayr Gold Cup than its Ascot-run namesake in 2013, yet the former race didn't make racing's increasingly token slot on 'Sports Personality of The Year', while the latter was its centrepiece. It's a reflection not of the respective races' stature (where were the Group 1s like the Lockinge and King George, won by true top-notchers?), but of the transcendent appeal of Gold Cup winner Estimate's owner; long to reign over us, and all that.

Even Timeform evidently aren't immune to the odd dip into simpering royalism: Estimate made the front cover of Racehorses of 2013, a rare example of a horse that hasn't won any of our end-of-year- awards receiving the honour.

Yet there are form clues in our annuals even where you don't expect them: very much in shot as Ryan Moore drives Estimate to victory are Simenon and Top Trip. Both are smart stayers, though in any other division their form wouldn't get them anywhere near as close to Group 1 honours. The inference is that any genuinely Group 1-class stayer will probably have enough to deny Estimate a second Gold Cup- and the BBC's video editors another easy way out.

As it happens there are four, perhaps five others still in the Gold Cup truly worthy of the 'Group 1 horse' epithet. The clearest example, Red Cadeaux, is an unlikely runner, as is Tac de Boistron. The latter would have probably been the selection, many of us at Timeform being fans, though it's purported that he needs softer ground than Ascot in high summer will provide.

The borderline case is the German-trained Altano. He just missed out on a place in the cover photo, finishing fifth in last year's Gold Cup, nearer the far rail than the first three. He shaped a bit better than that, though, hanging right as he stayed on strongly from an unpromising position. He might well have improved since, too, getting the better of Tac de Boistron to take the Prix du Cadran on his second try at two and a half miles. You feel that Altano fares better the further he goes and he comes here off the back of a perfectly satisfactory reappearance win in his homeland. He makes the shortlist but, as with the cover of Racehorses, he just misses out.

That leaves us with two, and it's here that we start having to strike a balance. In the binary realm of favourite and not favourite, Leading Light is absolutely where he ought to be. He won the Queen's Vase and St Leger last year, so his class and effectiveness at the course are beyond reproach. His stamina is unproven, though you'd never actively doubt it such is the way he sees his races out.

Greater nuance is required in weighing up Brown Panther. He's been around for longer than Leading Light yet hasn't achieved as much in form terms. It's not quite as simple as that, though. Brown Panther is only just starting to come into himself as a stayer and on the evidence to date it may prove to be the making of him. The last 10 months in particular have felt like Brown Panther's true coming out; wins in the Goodwood Cup, a heavy-ground Ormonde and the Henry II Stakes sit well beside an admirable eighth in the Melbourne Cup under a significant weight. This will be his first start beyond two miles and it'd be a brave man that would rule out another career-best.

Few would argue that Brown Panther has more chance of winning the Gold Cup than Leading Light. However betting isn't binary- it's analogue, with all the associated intricacies. Leading Light has a favourite's chance, but does he have much better than a 7/4 chance? The honest answer is a reluctant 'no'. Brown Panther is deservedly nominated as the main danger; is Leading Light almost three times as likely to win? A firmer 'no' this time.

This is ultimately what the Gold Cup comes down to. Leading Light is the likeliest winner of the Gold Cup, the potential superstar stayer we've been waiting for since Yeats retired (and before then, if you're strictly one for ratings), the horse that could one day become the cover star of Racehorses. You doubt that Brown Panther can reach those heights, though the Gold Cup is just as likely to be the race for him this year and the prices for this renewal underplay his chances. Joint-owner Michael Owen was the big winner at Sports Personality of The Year in 1998- 16 years on, Brown Panther might grab his own little snippet in that show.

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