Dettori double rolls back the years
Cracksman delivers first Champions Stakes success O’Brien equals record with 25 Group One victories
Aidan O’Brien may have equalled the world record for 25 Group Ones in a season yesterday but it was Frankie Dettori – who else at Ascot? – who stole his thunder when he won the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes with Persuasive and then promptly trumped it and, pretty much most other races this year, riding Cracksman to a seven-length victory in the Qipco Champion Stakes.
Just at the point of the afternoon when a blustery seventh British Champions Day, run on heavy ground which knocked the edge off one or two of the speedier summer horses, was beginning to need a dominant, championship display to justify the weeks of hype, Cracksman produced the outstanding performance by a colt this season.
Reminiscent of his sire Frankel, who dominated the first two runnings of this end-of-season finale, he powered clear of his rivals to turn a competitive Champion Stakes into a procession, coming home a long way clear of Poet’s Word and the multiple Group One winner Highland Reel.
The near-miss in the Epsom Derby and a bit of bad luck in the Irish equivalent were but a distant memory yesterday. Those extra months have allowed Cracksman to develop and mature into something near the finished article and a flag-bearer for his sire. He now looks to be not so much the each-way shot of June but an exceptional performer.
Judged on this display, the only middle-distance three-year-old in Europe who might be better as we go into the winter is his Prix de L’Arc de Triomphe-winning stable companion, Ena- ble. “He’s a lovely horse,” said his trainer and the man who has returned Dettori to the top, John Gosden. “He really has improved. He ran a blinder at Epsom, he was unlucky in Ireland, but he is bigger and stronger. He’s like a boxer who started at middleweight and who is now a light-heavyweight. He used to flip-flop around in his races and got in a muddle at Tattenham Corner, but he’s learning to race.
“It is great for Frankel to have a son win this race. We took him out of the Arc because I thought Enable was more in the zone, and I’m happy with that decision. He’s versatile and can go a mile and a quarter or a mile and a half.”
Two years after winning the Derby with Golden Horn, owner-breeder Anthony Oppenheimer has suddenly found another which may be his equal, which is an astounding feat for a relatively small operator. He said: “It’s Frankel’s first Group One winner in Europe, though he has had one in Japan. We expected a race. We didn’t think he’d win like that, and we can look forward to taking on [stable companion] Enable next year.”
Dettori’s first Group One winner was Markofdistinction in the 1990 QEII, and he remarked that he was still going strong 27 years later after Persuasive’s victory, but until Cracksman he had never won a Champion Stakes.
“That was amazing,” he said. “It’s my first Champion Stakes and he put a good field to bed in the manner of a champion. It’s a fantastic feeling. I glanced at the big screen and he was clear. I’ve not got words to describe it, brilliant. He’s been given time to develop and that’s what you’ve got now. He’s been working so sweetly and has got the success he deserved.”
Gosden did not just receive two trophies yesterday. He presented O’Brien with the one for this year’s trainer’s title. Gosden has not had a bad year by his or anyone else’s standards. Cracksman was his ninth Group One winner of the season, and that is a useful context in which to place O’Brien’s achievement of winning 25.
Though the Ballydoyle trainer always maintained he was not losing any sleep over the record set by Bobby Frankel in America in 2003, O’Brien was clearly delighted at having equalled his tally after Hydrangea had powered through the mud to win the Fillies And Mares Stakes.
However the victory of Order of St George in the Long Distance Cup, though only a Group Two, gave him as much if not more pleasure after the five-year-old pulled back a four-length deficit in the last furlong and, amid mutterings from the stands that the favourite was beaten, turned almost certain defeat into an unlikely halflength victory.
“It’s a big team effort,” he said. “All the way from the ‘lads’ [owners] down and I’m delighted to be a link in the chain. To win any Group One is so hard – we never expect them.
“It does mean a lot. Everyone puts in so much, day in, day out, and there are so many variables and near-misses. It’s just the way it stacks up: sometimes all the ducks are in a row, sometimes they’re not. I’m delighted, and we might never get back there again.”
An early indication that it was heavy rather than soft came when Librisa Breeze, Dean Ivory’s grey gelding by the jumping sire Mount Nelson, won the Sprint to round off a fantastic week for owner Tony Bloom.
Bloom landed one of the gambles of the season last weekend when Withhold won the Cesarewitch, then saw Brighton FC, the team which he owns, beat West Ham 3-0 on Friday night before Librisa Breeze popped up to win him his first Group One.
Good though it might have been for O’Brien and Bloom, at the end of it another Ascot day belonged to Dettori.