On a day when Ascot’s Champions Day supplied winners at 200/1 and 100/1 for home stables, two of Ireland’s biggest yards were at it elsewhere, writes Tony Stafford. It came as little surprise when Aidan O’Brien had the first five and then mercifully allowed someone else to get on the scoresheet before making it six on the day back home at Leopardstown.

With several multiple opportunities through the card, it wasn’t easy to identify which would be the better, notably in the fifth, the Group 3 Killavullan Stakes. This went to 13/8 second-best Dorset in the Derrick Smith silks, after getting first run on the Michael Tabor colours on 6/4 favourite Daytona, clear of the rest and much to the mirth of the two gentlemen concerned back at Ascot.

I doubt whether even they or their trainer would have been able to predict all six beforehand. If they had, it was around a 1,150/1 six-timer, eclipsing the 200/1 longest-ever Group 1 winning starting price recorded by the Richard Fahey-trained Powerful Glory back at Ascot. His victory in the Qipco Champion Sprint owed much to a Jamie Spencer masterclass amid the whoops and disbelieving on the straight course at Ascot where his age-old skills never dim.

Two races later I did venture into the paddock, when many of the connections stay to view their race on the big screen, to watch the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes. Horse racing can bring emotion far removed from everyday life and I swear I saw more than one very emotional woman and at least half a dozen men unashamedly crying as Charlie Hills’ Cicero’s Gift returned to unsaddle.

It was a day of days for owners Rosehill Racing and even jockey Jason Watson was wiping away a tear or two as he brought the unconsidered five-year-old back having edged out the big guns. Behind, a revived The Lion In Winter led home Alakazi and Docklands, with the disappointing pair Field Of Gold and Rosallion next home.

No doubt emotion in the entire Hills family was the order of the day just short of four months after Charlie’s father Barry, such a genius of a trainer, died at the age of 88. I snatched a few words with Barry’s widow and Charlie’s mum Penny earlier in the day. Afterwards I recalled one day driving down Fulham Palace Road in West London a decade or more prior, passing Charing Cross Hospital where Barry was being treated for cancer and seeing Penny on her way out having visited him, as she did every day during his illnesses.

She looked great on Saturday and I’m sure she felt that her son, often under-valued by ultra-critical people in racing – not always the kindest of arenas – had gone a long way to silencing his critics. After all, hadn’t he also won the Grade 2 Woodford Stakes at Keeneland two weeks earlier with the nine-year-old Khaadem, partnered by Frankie Dettori? That Fitri Hay-owned sprinter had won the Group 1 Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee at Royal Ascot both in 2023 and last year. You don’t keep top-class horses going that long into a career without having a real talent for the job.

Frankie no doubt would have been keeping an eye on matters at Ascot on the 29^th anniversary of his unique seven-race through-the-card feat. I saw Gary Wiltshire at Chelmsford on Thursday night and he’s still dining out on how he lost £2 million laying the last winner of that septet. I won’t ever forget it either, having to write an extra chapter for the book Year in The Life Of Frankie Dettori, ready to go as it was then.

Gary’s latest book detailing those days is a steady seller, and I hope Victor Thompson’s Eighty Years in the Fast Lane, also published by Weatherbys will get a nice response. I helped Victor and his partner Gina Coulson put it together, and the final piece in the puzzle came with Nick Luck’s stylish and heart-warming foreword last week. Publication should be at the end of this month.

If ever I write another book of my own, the title ought to be “I digress” (!), because almost the most unlikely eventuality of all those remarkable Saturday feats was occurring over in the US at Far Hills racecourse in New Jersey.

Gordon Elliott might have been bullied almost into submission in the top races over the years by Willie Mullins, but he certainly knows how to pick his spots. He sent a team of horses to the US’s biggest day of jump racing in both prestige and money terms on Saturday and won five, including their Champion Hurdle and Grand National.

Jack Kennedy, happily recovered from his latest injury, rode four of them, giving way to Danny Gilligan on Coutach in the £72k to the winner Champion Hurdle. Pride of place goes to the last of the quintet, Zanahiyr, an Aga Khan-bred son of Nathaniel, Enable’s sire. Nathaniel, at the age of 17, has been making enough of a revival to stand at an increased £20k at Newsells Park Stud. Graham Smith-Bernal, Newsells’ owner, was still bubbling over another sales triumph (3.6 million gns) even though only second of the pile at Tattersalls Book 1 for a son of Frankel, sold of course to Amo Racing.

Zanahiyr collected £120k for his neck success over fellow Irishman, the Gavin Cromwell-trained Ballysax Hank. He’s another versatile type having won the Summer Plate at Market Rasen (a race won the previous year by geegeez syndicate horse, Sure Touch, which also followed up there this week) and collected a 1m6f flat race on home turf before his trip to New Jersey.

Cromwell had fulfilled a long ambition when sending out Stumptown, a regular in good handicap chases, to win the Velka Pardubicka over the fearsome obstacles at Pardubice, Czech Republic, the previous weekend.

In all, Elliott’s five pulled in a total of £300,000. It’s to his credit that he’s come through the dark days and the ban that followed that infamous photo with ever more energy and operational dexterity.

Judged on recent events Elliott, Cromwell and Joseph O’Brien will be ever more visible going for the top UK prizes this winter when the home defence, with one or two exceptions, might struggle to withstand them – never forgetting the imperious Willie Mullins.

I hear a whisper that the champ already has earmarked the horses he intends to line up for the five Grade 1 races that were the fixture for so many years for the opening day at Cheltenham’s Festival meeting next March. One of the stable’s most ardent followers was bemoaning the rearrangement of the four-day programme that as he says dilutes the top races through the week. Maybe it’s a response by bookmakers sick of having their pants down and bottoms smacked every year by Wearisome Willie!

I digressed and did so again. What a day. We saw a proper middle-distance champion in the French gelding Calandagan, too speedy for the rest and ridden with great tactical awareness by Mickael Barzalona, two weeks on from his Arc de Triomphe win on Daryz. An early test of that form was Kalpana’s easy repeat win in Saturday’s Champion Filly and Mare race, soon clear in the straight and never tested in repelling a late thrust from Estrange. That striking grey ran a blinder considering the unsuitably fast ground.

John Gosden seemed more pleased to have ended the three-race tussle with Delacroix (who finished fourth) on the credit side, two-to-one, than worry about Osbudsman’s being beaten by the French raider who, like Daryz, is trained by Francis-Henri Graffard.

In that race I was astonished that Delacroix hadn’t finished in front of outsider Almaqam, trained by Ed Walker, especially as my vantage point was as near to level with the winning line as it can get. Certainly, it’s better than from the Royal Box fifty yards further down the straight!

Again, there was chat about Christophe Soumillon, even after winning the Two-Year-Old Conditions race on Mission Control for the Coolmore team and O’Brien. In the big one, he was ahead of both Calandagan and William Buick on Ombudsman turning for home but then was swamped by a pincer movement from behind, immediately losing his nice pitch. I doubt he would have troubled the winner, but he might have been in another close fight with the Gosden horse had he kept out of trouble. Most of us thought he ought to have done better in the finish for third too, but I’ve talked about his coming unstuck in photos before.

Then again, having had a chip each way (forget which of my old-time friends used to say that!) on Karl Burke’s Holloway Boy in the closing Balmoral Handicap, the one handicap on the day, my eyes again deceived me. I knew Crown of Oaks had won to give yet another big handicap to William Haggas but was sure Holloway Boy, in his first run since Meydan in April, was a narrow outright second.

Once more, I was wrong, the dead-heat announcement being a further surprise. Talking of Holloway Boy he, like the fifth-placed favourite Native Warrior, is trained by Karl Burke, one trainer inexorably moving up the ladder.

A reflection of that is how he’s now winning races overseas, too. Yesterday in the Group 2 Prix du Conseil de Paris at Longchamp he reversed Balmoral Handicap fortunes with Haggas, Convergent getting the better of his rival’s Dubai Honour by a neck.

Native Warrior was one of five Wathnan Racing runners on the day, from four different stables, all ridden by James Doyle. His is a fantastic job and one that can only get better as the owners and Richard Brown extend their tentacles.

There are still a few rungs to go before Karl Burke makes the top three in his peer group. After Saturday’s skirmishes, when O’Brien, Andrew Balding and the Gosdens each had one winner, it’s status quo in the UK trainers’ title race, with Aidan now guaranteed another triumph. If he wins the Futurity at Doncaster on Saturday, he’ll nudge over £8million in prize money.

Finally, after a day with more to mention than space warrants, on the way out I bumped into old pal Graham Thorner, former trainer and Grand National winning rider. I suggested that Ascot remains unique in that it attracts massive crowds for all its dates and that I’d never seen so many young people at a race meeting before. He agreed. Whatever Ascot’s blueprint for success, they should make sure they pass it on to less successful venues.

- TS