Richard Hannon: Barney Roy will contest Champion Stakes at Ascot

Barney Roy will contest the QIPCO Champion Stakes at Ascot on October 21 in preference to the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes on the same card.

The Richard Hannon-trained colt, runner-up in the 2000 Guineas before landing the St James’s Palace Stakes, will bid to make it third time lucky over the ten-furlong trip after being pipped a nose by Ulysses in the Coral-Eclipse before finishing third behind the same horse in the Juddmonte International Stakes on his latest start.

He is a general 6-1 second favourite for the £1.3 million feature, with the market headed by Cracksman at 7-2. Winter (7-1) and Poets Word (8-1) are other likely rivals.

"Barney Roy’s in great form and heads for the Champion Stakes,” Hannon said at Newmarket on Saturday. “He will do a little bit tomorrow morning on the grass and we will go from there.”

Hannon was at Headquarters to see Elysium Dream, part-owned by his wife Jemima, win the £150,000 Tattersalls October Auction Stakes. “That was the plan,” he said, after being asked to nominate future targets.

Earlier in the day, the trainer had struck with Danehill Kodiac in the Group Three Cumberland Lodge Stakes at Ascot. The 8-1 chance won at the expense of the odds-on French raider Waldgeist.

Hannon said: “I thought Waldgeist was coming to beat us but I don’t think it was a flukey result. Danehill Kodiac did it very well.

“He rarely runs a bad race and sticks his neck out - when they do that you are halfway there with them.

“I’m delighted with him. He’s had his problems during the year and that’s why he missed a good stint of the first half of the year.”

Danehill Kodiac will stay in training and Hannon added: “There’s a race in Dubai we might be thinking of and then there’s the Coronation Cup at Epsom, which Pether’s Moon won for us. Contrary to belief, I can train mile and a half horses.”