Royal return for Balanchine

It must be like having Klinsmann and Shearer leading the attack, with Andy Cole sitting on the bench, such is the wealth at the disposal of the Godolphin team as the Flat's middle-distance championship enters its second phase. Lammtarra and Moonshell, the Derby and Oaks winners, are already towards the head of the Classic generation. And now, warming up on the sidelines, there is a filly who may give them both a race when the older horses join the argument.

Balanchine was the driving force of Sheikh Mohammed's Godolphin operation last season, and gave the concept of wintering horses in Dubai two vital major successes in the Oaks and Irish Derby. When she was struck by colic soon after her victory at The Curragh, her chances of survival, far less resuming her career on the track, seemed no better than evens. Yet today she is fit, well and just six days away from her four-year-old debut, in the Prince of Wales's Stakes on the first afternoon of Royal Ascot.

A Group Two event at the summer's showpiece meeting is not, on the face of it, an ideal assignment after almost a year out of competition, but for Simon Crisford, Godolphin's racing manager, it was the obvious choice. "It's a good race to start in as it sets up her for the King George," Crisford said yesterday. "That's been the idea all along and we purposely didn't start her any earlier so that she could build up for an autumn campaign."

There is much more to Godolphin than simply buying a few dozen plane tickets to the Middle East each autumn, and Balanchine's training regime was being carefully directed towards next Tuesday's race long before her return from Dubai in early May. "She was under the watchful eye of all our personnel, and she enjoyed the benefits of the climate like all the others," Crisford said. "She also had a consistent surface to train on every day, and since it was decided that she would start in the Prince of Wales's Stakes she hasn't missed a day."

A trouble-free preparation, however, cannot guarantee that Balanchine's talent and enthusiasm have survived last year's illness, but if the fire still burns, it will take some quenching. Nearly 12 months after Balanchine's victory at The Curragh, the moment has come to refresh the recollection of it.

King's Theatre, runner-up to Erhaab in the Derby, started favourite in Ireland. A month later, he would take the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot. Colonel Collins, third at Epsom, also went to post, along with Tikkanen, the subsequent winner of the Breeders' Cup Turf. Balanchine, though, sauntered away from them all, hitting the front half a mile from home and going further clear all the way to the line. The reflection that she had achieved so much after just five outings only made it harder to bear when the King George and Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe came and went without her.

Through autumn and winter the medical bulletins gradually moved from pessimism to cautious hope that Balanchine's career could be saved, and finally to a clean bill of health. But many experienced punters will tell you that great horses never come back, and there are dozens of case histories to back them up. The hope, perhaps, is that this is yet another rule to which a Godolphin horse will prove the exception, now the Dubai sunshine and her patient handlers have done all they can.

"Because of the nature of the surgery and the problems she had last year, it's very much one race at a time," Crisford said. "She starts off on Tuesday and we just pray to God that everything's going to go okay." His prayer will be echoed by any backer who wants the summer's championship races to be worthy of the name.