Charlie Appleby On A Clash To Savour In The St James's

Royal Ascot is the pinnacle for anybody involved in horse racing in this part of the world. We start thinking about next year's meeting as soon as the last race is run this year. No joking, it is a 12-month build-up, such is the importance of these very special five days.

To explain it to the non-racing person, Royal Ascot is racing's Olympics. In sports, its status is respected, universally acknowledged, and beyond dispute.

We at Godolphin are really looking forward to the week. We are fielding the strongest team that I can remember, but the racing is so competitive, the objective is just to get a winner on the board. Anything over and above that would be a bonus welcomed and cherished.

Emotionless will run for us in the G1 St James's Palace Stakes, which I believe will prove the best race of the week. Rarely do you see three individual Guineas winners clashing at Royal Ascot, but you do here -- Galileo Gold (England), Awtaad (Ireland) and The Gurkha (France).

And, whichever colt comes out on top can justifiably claim to be European champion. If we were talking boxing, this would be billed as a unifying world title contest. But Emotionless could upstage them all in one hit.

I am very happy with Emotionless. He is a different animal to what we saw eight weeks ago. The 2,000 Guineas was going to come too early for him, and I am pleased we decided to wait for Ascot.

At this time of the year, horses change by the day. To me, Emotionless looks stronger physically than he did early last month. He deserves to be in this line-up. Wind it back two months, and he was second favourite for the Guineas, and we know that in the only disappointing run he recorded, he was injured (suffered a bone chip in his knee).

We have decided to run Cymric as a pacemaker for Emotionless. We just want to ensure a nice, sensible gallop. It's for ourselves, naturally, but also for the race itself. We can go into the race knowing there will be pace up front. We are trying to keep it simple.

I hope this is a St James's Palace Stakes for Godolphin to savour. But we have plenty of runners during the week. If I had to nominate two others to follow - Jungle Cat in the G1 King's Stand Stakes and Romantic View in the Albany Stakes.

Charlie Appleby is one of Godolphin's two private trainers based in Newmarket. He trains from Moulton Paddocks.