Soft Ascot points to season end for Appleby flying colt

Blue Point leads from start to take Bengough Stakes

BLUE Point might have signed off for the year on a high with an all-the-way win in the Bengough Stakes on unsuitably slow ground at Ascot.

Trainer Charlie Appleby suggested the classy three-year-old colt could miss the Qipco British Champions Sprint back at Ascot in two weeks’ time, if the ground looked like being soft, while owners Godolphin do have the ante-post favourite in Harry Angel.

The Al Quoz Sprint at Meydan could be an early target in 2018 for the classy sprinter. Appleby was doubly pleased with Blue Point (even-money favourite) as it provided jockey William Buick with a winning comeback ride after being out through injury for eight weeks.

Appleby was in France, where he said: “It’s great to have William back on board and it was good for Blue Point to get his head back in front as well. He just did not like that ground, so it was a brave performance.

“We might put him away for the winter and take him out to Dubai for something like the Al Quoz Sprint and look forward to a four-year-old campaign with him.

“We’ll speak to His Highness (Sheikh Mohammed), but if the ground is going to come up soft again, we might give Champions Day a miss.

“We’re going to stay in training ourselves and hopefully have some fun days with him.”

Richard Hannon has lofty targets in mind for Danehill Kodiac next year after he kept French Derby runner-up Waldgeist at bay to land the Group Three spoils in the Gigaset Cumberland Lodge Stakes.

The four-year-old made all the running in game style for Sean Levey and pulled out extra in the closing stages when Andre Fabre’s raider produced a late effort as the 4-7 favourite.

A previous course and distance winner, Danehill Kodiac (8-1) set a decent pace William Buick riding Blue Point winning The John Guest Bengough Stakes at Ascot and soon had the field well strung out.

The pack found it hard to get to the leader, who was still a neck in front at the line. Waldgeist, who had not run since finishing fourth in the Irish Derby 98 days ago, could not quite get there after being held up by Vincent Cheminaud for much of the mile-and-a-half contest.

Secret Number was a length and threequarters away in third.

Hannon said: “He had problems earlier in the year and that is why he missed a good section of the first part of the year. He’s done very well and he will stay in training and hopefully will win some very nice races.

“He rarely runs a bad race and he sticks his head out and tries very hard. He (Waldgeist) is a very good horse, but for some reason he didn’t pick him up. I thought he was coming to beat us, but then my horse is an older horse and he is only three.

“I will speak to the owner, but we might be thinking of going to Dubai. I’d like to think of something like the Coronation Cup next year for him, which we won with Pether’s Moon.”

Levey said: “He’s a lovely horse. You don’t always get the chance to keep a lot of older horses in training, especially nice ones like him.

“It’s so good for all the connections. They bought him two years ago. He had a few setbacks, they sat with him.

“Last year he won here and was placed here and I told connections to stick with him and wait for him. I said he’s going to