The St Leger Stakes is a Group 1 flat horse race in the UK open to 3-year-old thoroughbred fillies and colts. It takes place at Doncaster over a distance of 1m, 6f and 132y (exactly 2,937 metres), and it is organized each year in mid-September. Let's see our tips for St Leger Festival. We'll discuss the main runners competing in the Saturday meeting (the flagship day) and provide free horse racing betting tips for the outright winner.

St Leger Festival Tips: Full Preview

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The Festival will kick off today, Wednesday 13th September, featuring retired celebrities who return to action in this event competing in acharity race, a contest usually run on the straight mile. This Leger Legends race actually helps raise funds for a facility with rehabilitation services for injured jockeys. The St Leger Day will only take place on Saturday, so let's see what Thursday and Friday will bring. The Festival continues with the DFS Ladies day on thursday where Fashionable Ladies from all over the region up their efforts to emerge in the style stakes, all in an effort to claim the Best Dressed Lady title. The penultimate day of the iconic St Leger Festival, known as Gentlemen’s Day, always attracts the most prestigious racing of the week, and the Doncaster Cup takes centre-stage as one of the oldest races currently taking place under the Rules of Horse Racing.

The St Leger Day, also known as the flagship day, brings the four days of the festival to a spectacular climax at 3:35pm. Saturday will be biggest day of the week and home to the World’s oldest Classic, the incredible William Hill St Leger Stakes. We will focus on the last day of the festival today, as the stakes are high there.

St Leger Runners

The beginning of the week started with a market correction after the 5-day declarations for the St Leger Festival. Let's discuss the key runners and we will predict the winner based on the current surface at Doncaster as well as based on horses' performances.

Most bookmakers and the media focused on shortening Defoe in the St Leger odds market, but even if he was clipped in from an average top-price of 6/1, we think it's a fair stretch to label this as a type of significant gamble, since there is quite a lot to go by Saturday. Brando did well in the Haydock Sprint Cup last week, but he received a bigger price on Saturday than he received on Monday.

We also need to mention in our Doncaster racing tips that the market leader right now is Defoe, followed by Crystal Ocean and Capri, according to the latest horse odds. There's a fine line between these three runners, though. Defoe boasts probably the best form, and Crystal Ocean reads better as well, but the latter is the most suited by the very likely conditions on Saturday.

Right now, the racecourse at Doncaster is soft but the forecast is not settled for the rest of the week. Capri has actually been off since the victory at Curragh in early July and this is definitely not ideal. When it comes to Leading Light, he won a Royal Ascot, he also won the Gordon Stakes (soft ground), yet he'd probably prefer a way better surface at Doncaster. Plus, the combination of really testing conditions on 1m 6f 115y distance will test his stamina to the full.

Definitive Racing Tips for St Leger Day

All connections of Crystal Ocean are currently keeping their fingers crossed so that conditions at Doncaster don't deteriorate ahead of the William Hill St Leger. While Defoe's main competitor is very good on soft conditions, Defoe has won all of his last 4 starts for Roger Varian. He is poised to step up to Group 1 level for the first time and the 3-year-old grey colt is the most promising to get ahead in this race. Our Doncaster horse racing tips back Defoe mainly because competitors are either in a weaker form or due to the soft conditions (which are favourable to him).

One of the horses that interest us the most is outsider Douglas Macarthur. We felt that adding a "money" horse in our St Leger Festival tips for those who are seeking higher returns is the right thing to do, but let's see why this pick. Douglas Macarthur did pretty well in the early season, much like Capri and Rekindling, winning at Derrinstown, but here he is a "money" horse. His absolute best runs have actually come on decent ground yet he did not go badly on his only start on soft ground so far, in a Group one in France in 2016, and we can see him outrunning the odds on his first start here.