Aidan O’Brien’s hot favourite Kew Gardens heads William Hill St Leger declarations

HOT favourite Kew Gardens heads the field for Saturday's William Hill St Leger at Doncaster racecourse.

The three-year-old is one of seven entries for trainer Aidan O'Brien and currently heads the market at 6-4.

He could be joined by stablemates Southern France, Flag Of Honour, Nelson, The Pentagon, Zabriskie and Giuseppe Garibaldi.

Aidan's son Joseph is set to run Irish Derby winner Latrobe.

O'Brien jnr said: "He's in good form. We probably got our tactics wrong a bit at York but obviously we also found out that we needed to go back up in trip.

"It was a bit of a fact-finding mission at York as we had the easier option of running him in the Great Voltigeur under a penalty.

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"But I suppose it made more sense for us to find out exactly where we are with him. We had to rule it out or in.

"He didn't run too badly at all and we were probably a bit too positive in a race where you wanted to be sitting a bit further back. He was a bit outpaced and he stayed on well but after that we said we would go straight back up in trip.

"He's a grand big horse, uncomplicated and he should be better next year. He only had one start at two and he progressed a lot over the winter. Because he's a big horse he's still relatively lightly raced.

"It's a hugely competitive race but he is an Irish Derby winner and entitled to take his place. He should get the trip and we'll see what happens."

Charlie Appleby also looks to have a strong hand with Great Voltigeur winner Old Persian with stablemates Brundtland and Loxley also still in the mix.

Richard Hannon has Raymond Tusk entered while connections of Maid Up have forked out £50,000 to supplement the filly for the race.

Proschema for Tom Dascombe, Dee Ex Bee for Mark Johnston and Lah Ti Dar for John Gosden complete the 16 entries.