Barney’s on Ascot revenge mission

TRAINER Richard Hannon can’t wait for his horse Barney Roy to take on Ulysses again at Ascot this Saturday. Hannon has admitted that when the pair clashed in the International Stakes at York in August the race didn’t go according to plan and Sir Michael Stoute-trained Ulysses was a convincing winner. This time Hannon, champion trainer in 2014, believes Barney Roy has a great chance of outsmarting his rival to land the feature £1.3million Champion Stakes at Qipco Champions Day. Barney Roy was runner-up to Churchill in the 2,000 Guineas and, though Barney Roy beat his rival when winning the St James’s Palace Stakes at Royal Ascot, Ulysses then got the job done at York. Hannon, 41, said: ‘In the International Stakes, we started taking Churchill on two and a half, maybe three furlongs out. It very much played into the hands of Ulysses. I bet they couldn’t believe their luck, us two scrapping it out.It was like, we’ll wait for you two lads to get knackered and we’ll go past. We certainly won’t be setting it up for Ulysses this time.’