The potential shape of the King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot on Saturday changed abruptly on Thursday morning when Cracksman, the Champion Stakes winner last year, appeared among eight final declarations for the Group One contest while Kew Gardens, one of the ante-post favourites, was taken out.

Cracksman’s participation, though, depends on significant rain arriving at the track on Friday, and while 20mm or more is possible if forecast thunderstorms appear it is also conceivable that Ascot will see no rain at all.

“It’s very much hit and miss,” Chris Stickels, Ascot’s clerk of the course, said on Thursday. “The models we’re looking at suggest that between 2mm and 12mm of rain looks likely, and some forecasts narrow it down to between 4mm and 8mm. But we might get nothing, and there’s just under a 20% risk that there will be 25mm plus.”

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Cracksman was beaten at long odds‑on in the Prince Of Wales’s Stakes at the Royal meeting last month, and the good-to-firm going for that race was seen as one reason – and perhaps the most significant – for his disappointing run. On good ground, though, he would be a live contender to reverse last month’s form with Poet’s Word, who is the 9-4 favourite for the race on Saturday.

The uncertain forecast for Ascot also means that Stickels cannot be sure how much water, if any, will be put on to the track artificially.

“We’ve had to water and we couldn’t take the risk of not watering,” he said. “But if we get 4mm or 5mm [on Friday] that would probably stop us watering on Friday night, but it could also be back to good-to-firm on Saturday. Between 8mm and 10mm would probably mean good ground.”

As a result, betting turnover on Saturday’s race is likely to remain light until the question mark over Cracksman has been resolved. “If the ground is good-to-firm then he won’t run as we know he can’t handle that,” Anthony Oppenheimer, Cracksman’s owner, said on Thursday. “He’s going like a bomb at home and it would be fun to see him run, but I don’t think it would be fair on the public or the horse to run him on fast ground.”

John Gosden, Cracksman’s trainer, is likely to walk the track on Saturday morning and may be reflecting on the vicissitudes of the British weather as he does so. Three years ago he was forced to scratch Oppenheimer’s Golden Horn, the 2015 Derby winner, from the King George just three hours before the race, due to a series of downpours that had turned the going heavy.

Kew Gardens, who took the Group One Grand Prix de Paris on 14 July, was scratched from the King George by Aidan O’Brien, his trainer, due to a poor scope.

O’Brien, who set a world record for Group One wins in a calendar year last season, also saddled Magic Wand, the beaten odds-on favourite for last Sunday’s Irish Oaks, who was subsequently found to have an infection.

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“Our horses are just going through a little bit of a stage, a little bit of a change,” O’Brien said on Thursday, “and the odd one is not scoping right at the moment. We’ve seen it with the filly in the Oaks and we just have to be careful.”

The trainer’s concerns will have been compounded by the performance of his juvenile filly Goddess in the Group Three Silver Flash Stakes at Leopardstown on Thursday evening. Sent off at 1-2 to follow up an impressive win earlier in the month, Goddess made much of the running under Ryan Moore but folded tamely in the straight to finish last of six behind Skitter Scatter.

Goddess had been at the head of the betting for next year’s 1,000 Guineas before Thursday’s race, and her run was so far below the standard of her previous start that speculation about the overall health of O’Brien’s string can only increase as a result.