Spotlight on the 2015 Champions Series Middle Distance stars

Free Eagle winning in Ireland. Picture courtesy of Racingfotos.com.

At this time last year, you’d have got long odds – any odds, in fact – on the concluding event in the division, the Champion Stakes, being fought out between Noble Mission and Al Kazeem, neither really concentrating on racing back then, the former in mind and the latter in body, after time as a stallion. But it’s a season-long series, involving changeable characters, creating unforgettable stories, and though Noble Mission, in tandem with his brother Frankel, is now busy spreading those magical genes, Al Kazeem has already begun his next chapter, off the mark for the season, in France.

Another up-and-running for the year is The Grey Gatsby, who chased home French sensation Solow in Dubai. The underdog who wouldn’t lie down, The Grey Gatsby upset the odds twice last year, firstly in the French Derby and secondly when reversing York (Juddmonte International) placings with Australia in the Irish Champion Stakes.

In career terms, Australia has done his running, but his old friend Free Eagle is just getting started. Handled with trademark care and patience by Dermot Weld, Free Eagle had to sit out much of 2014, but when he did return, in September, it was with a bang, one of the middle-distance performances of the season to win a Group 3 by seven lengths.

His subsequent third in the aforementioned Champion Stakes was no mean feat considering the different conditions and his experience relative to the likes of Noble Mission and Al Kazeem. The Timeform impression is that Free Eagle can and will do something very special in this division at some point in 2015.

You shouldn’t normally look any further than Aidan O’Brien for the next-generation stars of the middle-distance series, and, sure enough, even after John F Kennedy misfiring, there’s some heavy artillery amongst his three-year-old squad, Ol’ Man River perhaps now leading the Coolmore charge to the Derby.

But Britain has a big gun of its own this year, courtesy of Andrew Balding’s Elm Park, who went from strength to strength as a juvenile, looking every inch an Epsom contender. He is one of several his age that falls into the ‘could be anything’ category, but the magic of the middle-distance division is that it serves the old guard as well as the new, showcasing the warriors as much as the wannabes.

In this category, by getting carried away with what’s coming through of the classic generation, it’s easy to forget the merits of the likes of Flintshire, Telescope, Kingston Hill and Cirrus des Aigles amongst those who’ve already been there, done that and got several t-shirts; just as it was easy to forget the merit of a certain Treve prior to her spellbinding second Arc, with a record-breaking third in the planning.