St Leger Festival 2025: Best Bets for Betfred St Leger Day

Betfred St Leger Day takes place on Saturday, and BettingLounge's horse racing expert Conlan has returned to go through some of the best bets of the day.

🥇 Best Bet

Welcome to my tips for the annual St Leger Stakes at Doncaster! Starting with my Best Bet for the day, I’m going to be delving into the Group 2 Betfred Champagne Stakes, taking place at 1:50 over seven furlongs, with a total of five runners set to take the field (at the time of writing).

From this selection, I have picked out Gewan, who is the chosen mount of P J McDonald, running for Andrew Balding. This isn’t Balding’s first rodeo in this race, winning with Chaldean in the 2022 renewal with the help of Frankie Dettori.

Gewan has undertaken an almost identical preparation to this race as Chaldean did, where both ran in the Group 3 Tattersalls Acomb Stakes at York, and a Class 4 Novice Stakes at Newbury. Similarly, both horses won these races in their respective runnings, which bodes well for today.

Looking deeper into the form of Gewan, in the Group 2 at York, he beat the promising Godolphin colt Distant Storm by over 4 lengths. This takes my interest particularly because in the prior race at Newmarket in July, Distant Storm hammered Oxagon - who is today's current market favourite - by 5 and a half lengths.

If this is anything to go off, which I truly believe it will be, then Gewan should be poised to give this field an absolute trouncing. That makes him my Best Bet of the day.

🥈 Next Best

For my Next Best bet of the day, I have looked further ahead to the big race of the day, the oldest of the Classics, the Group 1 St Leger Stakes, where I think that Ballydoyle Colt Scandinavia is going to blow the racing world away.

It’s a particularly interesting renewal of this grandiose and historical race this time around, as, in my personal opinion, it isn’t the strongest field we’ve ever seen here. We’ve seen the likes of Continuous sweeping away incredibly talented colts such as Arrest and Desert Hero.

Last year, we saw Jan Brueghel see off Illinois and Sunway. I believe that the majority of the competition that Scandinavia will face this time around will come from Paddy Twomey’s Carmers, and of course Derby hero Lambourn, if he takes to the step up in trip.

After his recent step up in trip in the Group 1 Goodwood Cup to 2 miles, where he stayed on strongly to topple both Illinois and Sweet William, the form has worked out impeccably for the Justify colt, as Sweet William has since won the Group 2 Doncaster Cup in impervious style.

It is no secret that Aiden O’Brien has faced some jockey troubles in recent times, with mainstay Ryan Moore facing injury, but I back Tom Marquand to seal the deal and bring the Master his third St Leger in a row.

👀 Longshot

My Longshot tip for the day comes in the Group 2 Betfred Park Stakes, and it goes to Cheveley Park’s own, Audience.

This gelding has certainly seen a mixed bag of results in the last two years, but I think that John & Thady Gosden have been looking to target this race through this horse since 2023, where Audience just fell short to Sandrine.

Last year, they saw their impressive Dubawi Colt Lead Artist swatted away by Kinross, so now I think they will be looking to lay their claim through what could be considered as an outsider of the field. He boasts an impressive record over seven furlongs on good ground, with form figures reading 371121, picking up a Group 2 at Goodwood in July, and a Group 3 at Newmarket in July throughout these runs.

He has dropped 3lb in rating since his appearance in the 2023 renewal of this race, and I think he will be a great each-way shot for the day.