O’Brien on Kew in bid to add Arc to St Leger

ST LEGER winner Kew Gardens looks like heading a three-strong Aidan O’Brien challenge for Sunday’s Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. The colt should be joined at Longchamp by Capri, O’Brien’s 2017 St Leger winner who was unplaced in last year’s Arc and most recently fifth to Waldgeist in the Prix Foy after missing most of the season. O’Brien also looks like being represented by Prix Niel runner-up Hunting Horn. John Gosden’s Enable is the favourite to repeat her Arc 2017 victory. O’Brien said: ‘The Arc is what we have been thinking of for Kew Gardens and Capri has come forward a lot for his run (in the Prix Foy) and will probably come forward again.’ O’Brien also has filly Magical in the Arc but she has an alternative option of running in the Prix de l’Opera. O’Brien, whose string was laid low in midsummer with a respiratory bug, signalled that they are now firing on all cylinders with a big-race treble at Newmarket on Saturday. O’Brien’s Breeders’ Cup Classic hope Mendelssohn also took the next step towards his big target at Churchill Downs on November 3 when third to Discreet Lover and Thunder Snow in the Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont Park, New York. Jamie Osborne-trained Toast of New York kept alive hopes that he will make the line-up for the Breeders’ Cup Classic with second place to Mind Your Biscuits in the Lukas Classic Stakes at Churchill Downs. It was the seven-year-old’s first run since January. EDREDON BLEU, the Henrietta Knight-trained chaser who won the 2000 Queen Mother Champion Chase and the 2003 King George VI Chase, has died at the age of 26.