Gosden confident over Stradivarius recovery

JOHN GOSDEN does not expect Stradivarius to be out of action for long with a problem picked up in winning the Gold Cup at the Royal Ascot meeting. The four-year-old returned lame after the race and lost a shoe, with the two incidents connected. ‘He is fine. What he did in the last furlong is he got close with the Aga Khan’s horse (Vazirabad) and he came across and struck Stradivarius and pulled his shoe off,’ said Gosden. ‘There is a clip on it and it went up in his foot so it pierced the sole of his foot. ‘He has had it poulticed this morning and he is doing fine. He was very lame last night, but he was much better this morning. ‘I think he will be better in two days. ‘It is only a short-term thing. He did very well to win after that.’ Meanwhile, Gosden intends to fully investigate the reasons behind Cracksman’s surprising defeat in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes at Royal Ascot on Wednesday. The Clarehaven handler felt the Frankel colt’s mind might not have been on the job when he laboured into second place behind Poet’s Word as the 2-5 favourite. Gosden said: ‘He ate up on Wednesday night and he was very pleased with himself on Thursday morning. ‘I wasn’t very pleased with him but he was very pleased with himself. ‘We have to address it in every way possible. Everything came a bit too easy to him. ‘He took from being laid-back to lazy to another level. I think we need to refocus his mind.’ Cracksman had previously won five races on the spin, including the Champion Stakes last season, but he did not impress everyone on his penultimate start in the Coronation Cup at Epsom.