There is a Bow Echo-shaped hole in the remainder of the 2026 Flat season, after the news last week that George Boughey’s unbeaten colt was retired to stud after suffering a training setback. The 2,000 Guineas winner exited the racing stage as the world’s top-rated three-year-old on a mark of 127, just 4lb behind the joint top-rated older horses, Ka Ying Rising and Ombudsman, and with the scope and untapped potential to match or exceed them before the end of the campaign.
A void, though, can also be a vacancy and Constitution River, the second-best three-year-old so far this year, will have an immediate opportunity to step into the breach when he lines up against Ombudsman, in what promises to be a memorable renewal of the International Stakes on the opening afternoon of York’s Ebor festival on Wednesday.
Like Bow Echo, Constitution River is unbeaten in three starts this year, and also carried his win-streak into his first all-aged Group One when he powered three lengths clear in the Eclipse Stakes at Sandown in July. After a narrow win from a horrible draw in the Prix du Jockey Club (French Derby) in June, it was enough to push his mark in the global rankings to 124, 7lb behind Ombudsman before they meet for the first time this week.
Today’s feature is not a two-horse race by any means, however, with Andrew Balding’s Item, a decisive winner of the Dante Stakes in May over the same track and trip, also in the nine-strong field. A ninth-place finish when second favourite for the Derby, run on soft ground and over a very different track, remains the only blip on his record.
Ombudsman is a shade of odds-on with most bookmakers to follow up his win in a distinctly odd running of the same race last year, when Birr Castle, his pacemaker, raced into a huge lead by the turn from home and was reeled in only inside the final furlong.
The fact that it was run just a few weeks after another pacemaker, Qirat, had won the Sussex Stakes at Goodwood at 150-1 probably added to the sense of unease in the stands as the race unfolded, but Wednesday’s race will hopefully be an easier watch from start to finish. Ombudsman will go into it as the world’s highest-rated middle-distance horse, but Constitution River has looked like something out of the ordinary since his seven-length defeat of a subsequent Royal Ascot winner in the Dee Stakes at Chester, and a price around 7-4 may significantly underestimate his chance.
Brilliant contests on paper do not always turn out that way on grass but the track, trip and timing of the International Stakes has produced a series of outstanding renewals down the years, including two in the past six seasons alone that picked up the end-of-season accolade of global Race of the Year. Today’s race offers a realistic chance to improve the record to three out of seven.
The International is now only the first of four Group Ones spread out over the Ebor festival, alongside the Yorkshire Oaks, the Nunthorpe Stakes and the City of York Stakes on Saturday, which was promoted to the top run from last year. It is a testament to the near 200-year history and pulling power of the Ebor Handicap, however, that it remains the feature event of the final afternoon and the four-day festival as a whole. It is, quite simply, one of the finest and most popular betting races of the year under either code, and the sight of a full field turning for home with any number of runners still in with a chance is always one of the highlights of the racing summer.
The quality in recent renewals has been remarkable, with winners including the recently retired Trawlerman, who went on to take the Ascot Gold Cup three years later, and, 12 months ago, Willie Mullins’s Ethical Diamond, who stormed home in the Breeders’ Cup Turf in California later in the season.
These feel like ever more uncertain times for racing away from the track, with the Racecourse Association (RCA) apparently disintegrating as the big tracks seek greater influence, and betting shops listed alongside “vape shops … and other rogue businesses” when the government announced its plans to revive “hollowed out” high streets last week.
