VIVA LAS VEGA
King Vega aiming to star at Doncaster by matching the feat of Kingsclere stablemate Kameko
King Vega attempts to give his trainer Andrew Balding a third victory from the past seven runnings of the Vertem Futurity Trophy at Doncaster this afternoon.
And his timing is perfect.
Kameko captured the final Group 1 race of the British season 12 months ago, and went on to give Balding a second Classic triumph when landing the QIPCO 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket in June.
But Kameko has raced here for the final time and r e t i r es aft e r contesting the Breeders’ Cup Mile at Keeneland two weeks today.
“He’s been an absolute star,” says the master of the historic Kingsclere stables. “I think it’s going to be a totally different test in America but he hasn’t run a bad race all season.” Kameko’s exit to a career at stud leaves the way open for a new champion to follow llow in the prints of Kameko and
Elm Park, winner of the major juvenile test in
2014.
King Vega comes into the race as a tworace maiden, and statistically that makes him an unlikely candidate for top honours in a Group 1.
However, everything else has been turned on its head in 2020. The old rules don’t apply.
“I think most of the old conventions still hold when you get to the races like this,” admits Balding. “But it has been a truncated season and a one-off.”
King Vega, a 350,000-guinea purchase from the Tattersalls
Book 1 sale last October – his owners include Chelsea, Liverpool and England defender Glen Johnson – already has something in common with Balding’s previous two victors.
“Somebody told me that he made his debut in the same race at Sandown that Elm Park and Kameko started off in,” reveals Balding.
“I didn’t consciously start him off in the same race as them, but I always like to start my nicer two-year-olds off at tracks like Sandown or Salisbury.”
There was sufficient promise in King Vega’s three-quarterlength second to Yibir at the beginning of August to persuade Balding to aim at the Group 3 Solario Stakes back in Esher three weeks later.
Oisín Murphy’s mount again took the silver, a length and a quarter behind the Richard Hannon-saddled Etonian.
“He was better than the bare result suggests,” argues the Lope De Vega colt’s trainer. “He missed the break, got caught on heels and shuffled back.
“That wasn’t to the advantage of a horse who needs at least a mile.”
A minor training setback ruled King Vega out of the Group 2 Royal Lodge Stakes, another race taken in by Kameko and Elm Park en route to Town Moor, at Newmarket in September.
But Balding is confident his juvenile is ready to step up to the highest level and lock horns with Aidan O’Brien’s Wembley and the Charli e Appleby- trained One Ruler.
“He’s a fantastic physical specimen and a big, long-striding horse who should be suited by the straight course at Doncaster,” says the trainer.
“This is one of the races which our dreams for the winter rest upon.
“If he wins or runs well you can believe that you’ve got a horse capable of running well in the top races next year.”