The 2025 Ebor Festival gets underway next week, with York set to stage four days of prestigious racing action.
Four Group One races, alongside the Festival’s namesake-handicap the Ebor Heritage Handicap, highlight the 28 races scheduled to take place on the Knavesmire.
The first Group One race to run at the meeting is day one’s feature – the Juddmonte International Stakes.
A mile and two furlongs, between the starting gates and the shadows of the winning post await horses looking to take home a share of prize money worth £1.2m.
The race is not only the most valuable race of the Festival but also the venue’s richest race of the campaign.
For exclusive stories and all the detailed Racing news you need, subscribe to the Racing Ahead website, digital edition, or magazine from as little as 8p a day.
Aidan O’Brien
This year will see leading Irish-trainer Aidan O’Brien go for back-to-back wins in the race, after City Of Troy claimed victory last season.
He is the race’s leading trainer, with seven wins in total and this year he trains the current (6/4) ante-post favourite Delacroix.
This colt had won his first two starts of the season, both in Group Three contests before being a disappointing favourite for the Epsom Derby – in which he finished ninth.
Though the three-year-old bounced back to form by winning the Sandown Coral-Eclipse, defeating favourite and Prince Of Wales’s Stakes winner Ombudsman to shed his Group One maiden tag.
Speaking in the aftermath of that race, O’Brien said: “I can’t tell you how important he is.
“The lads have been looking for a Dubawi all their life and he’s out of a champion. He’s a beautiful big horse with power, strength and everything you want.”
Later in July, he went on to confirm his intentions for the colt, he said: “The plan for Delacroix and Camille Pissarro is that they are both on the York programme.”
Ombudsman
Delacroix is set to re-oppose Ombudsman, who is the 7/4 second favourite in the ante-post market.
The Godolphin-owned colt enjoyed a perfect (4/4) campaign as a three-year-old before suffering his first defeat on reappearance, when he was second in a Sandown Group Three.
His Royal Ascot victory followed before his subsequent defeat to O’Brien’s horse in his latest run.
It was a race in which jockey William Buick came under scrutiny, due to his perceived tactics of riding the colt closer to the pace and widest of all for large parts of the contest.
After the race, trainer John Gosden said: “We thought Delacroix would go forward and the French horse would sit handy but of course it’s all happened the other way round.
“That happens in small fields and it didn’t turn out the way we thought.
“Ombudsman has run a wonderful race. We were trapped rather wide, got close to the pace and Delacroix has then come and run us down late.
“It was one of those kind of races with a small field that can get messy but full marks to the winner who has gone and outstayed the lot of them.”
Challengers
The two at the front of the ante-post market are likely to face the challenge of trainer Andrew Balding‘s filly See The Fire.
Two of her three career wins have come at this track, with the other coming on debut, at Newmarket, in July 2023.
Her most recent win came in a Group Two back in May, on what was her second start of the season, after finishing fifth on her seasonal reappearance at Sandown.
She has since placed third in that Royal Ascot race behind Ombudsman, before filling the same spot behind O’Brien’s star-filly Whirl in the Nassau Stakes.
After winning the top-trainer prize at Glorious Goodwood, Balding said: “I can’t complain.
“If you come to Glorious Goodwood and have four winners, it is a good week.
“See the Fire was a disappointment in the Nassau Stakes but, if the race had been 24 hours earlier before the rain came, she might have had more of a chance.”
See The Fire is currently a 7/1 shot with Japanese raider Danon Decile slightly shorter at 4/1.
Danon Decile
This colt is a two-time Group One winner in his native Japan, beating European great Calandagan in his latest race on what was his first race outside his home country.
That race at Meydan also saw multiple Group One winner Rebels Romance finish back in fourth.
He is one of two horses looking to become the first foreign-trained winner of the race since Electrocutionist, who won it for retired Italian trainer Valfredo Valiani, back in 2005.
The other is the undefeated French horse Daryz, trained by Francis Graffard.
This Aga Khan-owned colt has won all four of his racecourse starts, including a listed race on his third race at Longchamp, before winning a Group Two at Saint-Cloud.
He is trading at 10/1 in the current ante-post market.
Anmaat also features in the betting, after finishing second to Los Angeles and Ombudsman, in the Tattersalls Gold Cup and Prince Of Wales’s Stakes.
Trainer Owen Burrow’s two-time Group One winner is sure to give his running should he line up here.
Of the other horses in the betting, the shorter priced of the outsiders all hold other entries into different races.
The aforementioned Whirl is entered into the Yorkshire Oaks, alongside stable-companion Minnie Hauk.
They are a 14/1 and 25/1 chance, respectively.
READ MORE: Ebor Festival 2025 – Dates, how to watch on TV, trainers and jockeys to watch
