In The Races, pundit Declan Rix believes Sprint Cup favorite Shaquille deserves to compete in Haydock Group One on Saturday.
The star sprinter added a July Cup win to his previous Commonwealth Cup success at Royal Ascot and is now bidding for a Group One hat-trick for Julie Camacho’s team.
It was not without drama, as he fell from the stalls in both runs before moving to the front at Newmarket.
That was enough for Rex to clear the favorite with another Royal Ascot winner St. Lawrence.
“I think it’s clear that Shaquille is the most likely winner,” Rex said on the Winners Weekend digital programme. “Thank God he’s running because if he wasn’t here it would have been a bad renewal of the race.
“You want to compete with him at that price. There’s the problem of the stalls and supposedly James Doyle was in Julie Camacho’s yard and they were working hard and they thought they had the key to him.
“But at 6/5, do you really want to invest at that price?
“The other thing is that speed gravitates from medium to high with the Regional, Antarctica and Swingalong horses which I think are the speed horses.
“Shaquille was drawn from five and I wanted a horse that was drawn around speed and would have a perfect set-up and the horse I came down to was St Lawrence, the winner at Wokingham.
“The horse has turned upside down since he left Roger Varian’s yard and Archie Watson’s team have done a fantastic job with him.
“He was impressive when he was slow, but Holly Doyle had a lot of horses under her and from a distance she looked very confident.
“He ran well [in the Prix Maurice de Gheest] It didn’t go well that day as Holly had to wander through the houses.
“It’s just a stab in every direction at a race that could set him up well tactically, especially if the candidate misses the gates and the race develops away from him.”
