THE St Leger meeting at Doncaster has, perhaps, always fallen in the shadow of York’s Ebor fixture, and its positioning in the modern British racing calendar is problematic.

Once the grand finale of the season in the North, with the final classic representing the transition between summer and winter seasons (winter, according to the old saying comes on the tail of the final finisher in the Leger), it now precedes the much-vaunted Champions Day and is unable to offer quite the same fanfare given how the Ascot extravaganza has been marketed.