James Doyle celebrates as Lazzat takes Group One glory

James Doyle excited for Qipco British Champions Day rides at Ascot from Lazzat to One Look

By Sporting Life

Horse Racing

Wed October 15, 2025 · 2M ago

James Doyle is looking forward to a stellar book of rides on Qipco British Champions Day at Ascot on Saturday.

Wathnan Racing’s retained jockey has a chance in six of the seven races with the Long Distance Cup the only contest where the prominent owners are not represented, with Division all set to get his day under way in the inaugural Two-Year-Old Conditions Stakes following his win at York on Saturday.

His best chance, according to the antepost betting at least, is Jerome Reynier’s Lazzat in the Champions Sprint, the four-year-old having won the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes over six furlongs at Royal Ascot in June.

Wathnan also have Kind Of Blue and Flora Of Bermuda in contention, but Doyle said on the Nick Luck Daily Podcast he couldn’t have jumped off the son of Territories.

“I’ve known for a long time this was the target for these three horses so it’s given me a few headaches along the way for sure,” he said.

“They are all top-class horses and have all run cracking races this season. Flora and Kind Of Blue ran crackers in the Haydock sprint and Lazzat obviously didn’t run his race, but I can’t get away from the feeling he gave me at Royal Ascot.

“He beat a very good horse in the Japanese sprinter [Satono Reve] and there were three lengths back to Flora that day. If he can return to that sort of form he’ll be tough to beat on Saturday.”

Doyle will be on Karl Burke’s Fallen Angel in a super renewal of the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes on the Ascot straight track, where she could take on Field Of Gold and Rosallion, but her jockey thinks the track will suit.

He said: “She is quite unusual, because to have a horse of her talent and the way she likes to be ridden you don’t really see that too often - a top-class mare at a mile that likes to be ridden really aggressively.

“She loves to get ahead and give everyone a fright and then get ahead of everyone that’s had a crack at her.

“I think the track should suit her. It can be difficult to make all, I’m not saying she has to make the running as she didn’t do that in Leopardstown, but the stiff finish should suit her well.

“The competition is completely different, the strongest she has faced for some while, Rosallion is hard to knock and we’ve all seen what Field Of Gold can do - he’s particularly scary.”

Fallen Angel wins the Sun Chariot

In the Champion Stakes Andre Fabre has supplemented First Look to take on the likes of Ombudsman, Delacroix and Calandagan, and Doyle is looking forward to getting back on him after Mickael Barzalona rode him to success at Longchamp last time.

He said: “On all known evidence you’d say he’d struggle on what he’s achieved to date, but he’s trained by a genius and when he’s prepared to throw his hat in the ring you have to have a lot of respect for it.

“I’ll be intrigued to see how he runs and hopefully he runs a nice race. We lost him for a little while, but the gelding operation certainly worked and he’s been faultless since that.

“He’s beaten some decent horses, he saw off Goliath in Deauville in pretty tenacious fashion and backed it up with a decent win in the Dollar, on different ground, so he’s quite versatile in that regard.”

Finally, Doyle will be on Native Warrior in the closing Balmoral Handicap but before that he’ll take the ride on Paddy Twomey’s One Look in the Fillies’ & Mares’ after she was third in the Prix de l’Opera on Arc weekend.

“She’s tough and didn’t quite get the rub of the green in France,” Doyle said. “As in the Blandford I got a bit too far back, my plan had been to be a bit handier in the Opera, but she doesn’t bang out of the lids to put you in a good spot, she just jumps on you fair.

“I was caught wide and I got an opportunity to following Oisin [Murphy] on See The Fire, so I slipped in behind her, had to switch for a run in the straight but it was a very good run.

“There won’t be many fillies as tough as she is and if she can take the short gap between races, Paddy knows her very well, she’ll go well.”

James Doyle excited for Qipco British Champions Day rides at Ascot from Lazzat to One Look

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