Balding revels in joining the greats on King George list

Andrew Balding may have been brought up on stories of the King George VI And Queen Elizabeth Stakes, but he had perhaps never considered Kalpana providing him with his own victory in the Ascot showpiece would leave him scrambling for excuses to avoid a tattoo of his champion mare.

Balding’s Kingsclere home and the midsummer highlight have always been indelibly linked. It is the hallowed training centre from which the first ever winner Supreme Court was sent out in 1951 and also where the trainer’s late father Ian Balding sent out the great Mill Reef to triumph in 1971.

It was also the place his daughter Flora had mused if her father had ever considered a tattoo earlier this week, only to be batted away with a reply Balding could now live to regret after emulating his father only seven months on from his sad passing, to add his own chapter to the Kingsclere-King George anthology.

Balding said: “It’s a big deal and one we’ve always wanted to win. It’s a race that defines your season and also your career and I’m so pleased.

“My daughter asked me the other day if I would ever get a tattoo and I said maybe I’ll get one of Kalpana if she wins the King George, so I hope she doesn’t hold me to that!

“It’s great to emulate my father and as well as Mill Reef he had a couple of near misses with Mrs Penny and Diamond Shoal so it’s a race we’ve grown up watching and hearing stories about.

“I think the first ever winner of this was trained at Kingsclere by Evan Williams and it’s lovely to bring it back home all these years later.”

Last year Colin Keane had sent the Ascot specialist on only to see Kalpana have no answer to Calandagan’s French flair at the finish as he flashed by with an almighty flourish.

Connections may have felt a sense of déjà vu as Keane angled out his mount and unleashed for home, with Mickael Barzalona cranking up the revs aboard Francis-Henri Graffard’s defending champion on the outside.

However, 40 years on from Dancing Brave avenging his Derby disappointment in his rematch with this Shahrastani, it was now time for Kalpana to do the same, as the sharper, battle-hardened Kalpana sustained her charge to add her name to a glittering roll of honour that also includes the great three-time heroine Enable for the same owners.

Balding went on: “We were honestly thrilled last year when she was second because we were worried about the ground, but this is just magic really.

“Looking at the field this year we thought we were just a lively outsider and if you’d have asked me this morning we’d have settled for third.

“There was always a danger she might have been run down again and you could see Calandagan coming down the outside, but for whatever reason this year she just seems leaner and slimmer and easier to train.

“She’s a much finer model this season and I don’t know why, but I’m sure that has made the difference today.”

Kalpana could be given the chance to follow in Dancing Brave’s footsteps again later in the year if tasked with another tilt at the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, but for now Balding is content to savour every second of the five-year-old’s finest hour.

“She’s a very special filly and it was always a comfortable watch and we’re all thrilled,” said Balding.

“This has always been one of her targets and it would have been very easy for Juddmonte to have retired her at the end of last year but she’s paid them back in spades.

“Juddmonte are a great operation to train for and horses like this, they make my life a lot easier.”