Muntahaa goes it alone to cap great week for Gosden

TRAINER John Gosden crowned a magnificent York Ebor meeting with a 1-2 in the signature race of the four-day meeting yesterday with Muntahaa and Weekender.

The three-and-aquarter-length victory of Jim Crowley-ridden 11-1 shot Muntahaa from Frankie Dettoripartnered stablemate Weekender earned the Newmarket trainer over £400,000.

Having won Wednesday’s International Stakes with Roaring Lion, Thursday’s Galtres Stakes with Lah Ti Dar and Friday’s Lonsdale Cup with Stradivarius, Gosden’s earnings at the meeting are almost £1.2million. Stradivarius’s victory also bagged the Gosden stable a £1m bonus for winning a sequence of four staying races this summer. Gosden (below) is around £1.5m clear of Aidan O’Brien in the Trainers’ Championship. He has one hand on the crown. For Europe’s richest and arguably most competitive handicap, Muntahaa landed the prize with conspicuous ease.

Having raced alone from his wide draw for the first three furlongs Muntahaa was also travelling well behind his pacemaking stablemate before hitting the front still hard on the bit two furlongs out and pulling clear.

Gosden, who could run the Sheik Hamdan-owned winner in November’s Melbourne Cup, said: ‘They are two fabulous horses and we trained them specifically for the race. I told the jockeys before I had never had them better. It wasn’t a fluke.’

The win was a reversal of fortune for Crowley, who had suffered a crushing disappointment when hot favourite Battaash finished fourth in Friday’s Nunthorpe Stakes. Crowley said: ‘We had a plan to stay out wide because he is a quite keen horse and he works very well on his own. My only concern was not to get there too soon. It’s a nice pick-me-up.’