Magical day... and Frankie lands 250th Group 1
MAGICAL left the rest spellbound to give Aidan O’brien a first win in the QIPCO Champion Stakes at Ascot.
Punters backed the daughter of Galileo – a tired 10th in the Prix de l’arc de Triomphe 13 days earlier
– into evens favourite for the 10-furlong Group 1, the feature race of the glittering £4.2million British Champions Day card.
And Magical, so often the bridesmaid behind the great Enable, delivered under trainer’s son Donnacha O’brien, beating Addeybb by three-quarters of a length, with Japanese mare Deirdre third.
“She is the ultimate racehorse,” said O’brien Snr, who had saddled Magical to capture the Fillies & Mares Stakes at the meeting 12 months ago. “She is the most unbelievable mare I have ever seen.
“The Arc was a strongly-run race and she has come out of that and won here. What can you say?” added the master of Ballydoyle ( left), who will now consider sending Magical to the Breeders’ Cup at Santa Anita next month.
The O’briens’ Kew Gardens inflicted a first d defeat for two years on Str Stradivarius, when getting the better of a straining tussle by a nose in the Long Distance Cup.
Stradivarius, the 8-13 hotpot, had won 10 races in a row since his third in the two-mile Group 2 in 2017 and his jockey Frankie Dettori said: “He couldn’t use his turn of foot. The other horse outstayed him in the ground.”
Dettori, 48, got the better of a photo-finish for the Fillies & Mares Stakes, in which Star Catcher fended off the O’brien-saddled Delphinia by a short head to give the Italian the 250th Group 1 triumph of his amazing career.
“To do it at Ascot – my spiritual home – is incredible,” beamed amed Dettori. “That’s 18 Group 1s this s year, which is my best t season, so there’s life in n the old dog yet!”
As Leicester City y r emembered their r much- loved chairman an Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha bha – killed in a helicopter crash on October 27 last year – Donjuan Triumphant ant and Silvestre De Sousa carried arried his blue-and-white King Power wer Racing silks to victory in a Group up 1 race for the first time with a 33-1 -1 skinner in the British Champions Sprint. “He was the first horse the chairman ever bought, the first horse we had for him – and he would have been so proud of him right now,” said winning trainer Andrew Balding.
The Sean L Levey- ridden King Of Cha Change, whose only defeat this season came when a 66 66-1 second in the 2,000 G Guineas, was allowed to s start at 12- 1 for the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes (Group 1), but l laughed at those odds w with a length- and- aqu quarter defeat of French raid raider The Revenant.
“E “Everybody thought the Gui Guineas was a fluke, but I was confident,” Levey said of t the Richard Hannon trai trainee.