Sweet music for Gosden as Stradivarius lands £1m bonus
THEY said it could not be done, but little chestnut colt Stradivarius
– half the size, twice the stride – landed the inaugural
£1 million bonus prize at York yesterday when he won the fourth race in an ‘impossible’ series, which also included the Ascot Gold Cup and the Goodwood Cup.
Bjorn Nielsen’s home-bred fouryear-old may not have been at his brilliant best in yesterday’s Lonsdale Cup – indeed there was a moment three furlongs out when he looked in deep trouble – but all is well that ends well. He was in front with a furlong to run and although, Count Octave kept him up to his work, Stradivarius and Frankie Dettori passed the post a length and a half to the good. Aidan O’Brien’s Idaho was four-and-a-half lengths away in third place.
“I hope they double it next year,” said trainer John Gosden. “It is all down to the horse. He is not big, but he has tremendous determination and a lot of class. I wouldn’t say he was at his sparkling best. Ascot was quite the toughest race of the four.”
Nielsen said that, although Stradavarius is entered for the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, if he ran again this year it would probably be at Champions Day.
“I’ve no inclination to take him to Australia (for the Melbourne Cup). It puts wear and tear on the wheels.”
Dettori, a hard man to keep out of the headline acts this week having ridden Mark Johnston’s record 4,194th winner on Thursday, said: “Throughout the race he wasn’t carrying me as well as he has done in the past. I had to get really serious in the last two-and-a-half furlongs. It wasn’t his best performance but, hey, we’re millionaires now.”
Dettori completed a big-race double when, deputising for Jamie Spencer, he partnered Emaraaty Ana to win the Gimcrack Stakes.
Battaash, the 4/5 favourite, did nothing to dispel accusations that he is racing’s most mercurial talent when he could finish only an ordinary fourth in the Coolmore Nunthorpe Stakes. The race went to Bryan Smart’s 40/1 shot Alpha Delphini, ridden by Graham Lee, which beat Mabs Cross by such a small margin that it took the judge five minutes to determine the result.
It was a masterstroke by Smart and Lee to take the sheepskin cheekpieces off the winner.
“He is as game as a pebble and has been rallying when headed,” explained Lee, a Grand National and Ascot Gold Cup winner in the past. “I thought if we took them off he’d see them coming.” (© Daily Telegraph, London)