Baldrick plan pays off for John Gosden as Muntahaa romps to Ebor glory with Cowley

- In no English county do they know the value of a pound more than Yorkshire. Over the four days of Yorkshire's greatest race meeting there has been no man better at winning pounds than John Gosden, who sealed a wonderful week by supplying Muntahaa and Weekender to finish first and second in the most valuable Flat handicap ever staged in Britain.

On Wednesday Gosden captured York's most richly-endowed prize when Roaring Lion claimed the Juddmonte International. On Friday he watched Stradivarius

York

land a £1 million bonus and on the Knavesmire's final August afternoon he sent his seasonal total soaring past the £5 million mark with a victory that owed much to his own ingenuity.

For it was the runaway trainers' championship leader who decided that from the widest stall but one Jim Crowley should plot his own course through the opening 800m of a Sky Bet Ebor he had long since circled as an ideal target for Hamdan Al Maktoum's five-year-old.

All Gosden's plotting paid off, with the well-backed Muntahaa defying a mark of 109 to surge past his 112-rated Frankie Dettoriridden stable companion at the end of a £500,000 feature that underlined the new-look Ebor is now a race in which quality counts.

Next year that race will double in value to £1 million (R18.5 million), but before that Muntahaa could seek to earn his connections more than £2 million if Sheikh Hamdan agrees with the suggestion to contest the Lexus Melbourne Cup, the nation-stopping showpiece York one day hopes the Ebor might emulate.

Yet what York already has is quite special, as was made clear by Gosden, whose four winners at the meeting also leading William Hill St Leger candidate Lah Ti Dar.

"These are two fabulous horses and we trained them specifically for this race," said Gosden. "I told the jocks beforehand I had never had them better. They ran super races and it wasn't a fluke.

"We've had a great week. We didn't bring many here but you don't mess around at York. It's a proper track and the most fantastic meeting."

Undeniably fantastic was the cunning plan devised earlier in the week by Muntahaa's master trainer. Revealing that plan was created during a walk of the Ebor course, he said: "I stood where the gates would be and from our stall I thought we could run four furlongs (800m) straight, be on our own and have our own race.

"I told Jim I had this Baldrick plan and that it might be a bit mad but I told him to stay out there on his own and then slot across.

"It worked perfectly. It was rather like he dropped in at the mile-and-a-quarter (2000m) start. I think it made a big difference to the horse. –