Top of the table! Adayar records best performance of the season in King George

Just like the Eclipse, Saturday’s King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Qipco Stakes was a clash of the generations that emphatically went the way of a three-year-old. This time the performance was even more meritorious.

By attaining a Racing Post Rating of 128 in Ascot’s midsummer highlight, Adayar placed himself among the best winners of the contest in recent times and he is now the highest rated three-year-old colt in training – above Eclipse winner St Mark’s Basilica (126) and, perhaps crucially, stablemate Hurricane Lane (123), though Charlie Appleby’s Irish Derby winner is yet to have the opportunity to take on his elders.

Adayar also produced the highest-rated performance of the season, one pound higher than the previous best set by Palace Pier in the Lockinge. While, in the context of Derby winners, he is the first horse to win a subsequent Group 1 since Harzand in 2016 and almost certainly the best winner of the race since Golden Horn a year prior. Golden Horn went on to win the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe and connections will surely head in that direction.