Alcohol Free is probably not the best description of racing on the Knavesmire this week but it may well be the answer to the Juddmonte International, highlight of York’s Ebor meeting, which starts today and finishes with the eponymous handicap on Saturday.

If St Mark’s Basilica’s defection, due to an infected cut, is a disappointment it is counteracted by the fact that it has taken a can-opener to today’s contest.

Mishriff, the £10 million colt, has done all his Group One winning abroad. He was a tad rusty in the Eclipse and time will probably determine that his length-and-three-quarter second to the Derby winner, Adayar, in the King George was not far off a career-best over a trip which stretched him. The return to a mile and a quarter can only help him today.

Aidan O’Brien has been firing in the winners in France and America but his last British winner was St Mark’s Basilica in the Eclipse at the start of July. He has hardly been banging them in at home either.

His five-time Group One winner Love, a late substitute for St Mark’s Basilica, suffered her first defeat since her juvenile days when third in the King George, where O’Brien felt things did not happen for her, and her Group One success this season was over today’s trip in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes.

However, in a race that has a reputation for shocks and favourites being turned over – ever since Brigadier Gerard suffered the only defeat of his career in its first running – it may pay to go with Andrew Balding’s Sussex Stakes winner, .

Inside the last 100 yards at Goodwood, Alcohol Free was drawing away from Poetic Flare, which did the form no harm in France on Sunday.

Both Mishriff and Love, with stamina guaranteed, will not be hanging around and while Co Kerry pilot Oisín Murphy will want to smother Alcohol Free’s enthusiasm early on, he will not want to give either horse too much of a head-start.

Of the apparent bit-part players there is not much between Juan Elcano and Mohaafeth, Mac Swiney looks like he prefers more cut while Alenquer’s claim to fame is having beaten Adayar first time out this season.

York’s St Leger trial, the Great Voltigeur, looks between Godolphin’s Queen’s Vase winner Kemari and O’Brien’s Sir Lucan, while the five-runner Tattersalls Acomb Stakes can go Balding’s way via given how much the stable’s juveniles generally come on for their first run. 

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2021]