Cracksman wins Champion Stakes in scintillating style at Ascot
• Roaring Lion and Stradivarius also win on card for John Gosden
Aidan O’Brien handed John Gosden the trophy to mark his third British trainers’ championship after Cracksman’s emphatic success in the Champion Stakes here on Saturday, and though officially the season does not end until 31 December, there was no point in waiting any longer. Three winners on Champions Day confirmed that Gosden is now as pre-eminent among British trainers as O’Brien has long been in Ireland, and though two of Saturday’s winners are now going to stud, it is easy to see the next generation at Gosden’s stable picking up where the current one left off.
Cracksman had not been seen on a track since his defeat at odds-on in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes at Royal Ascot in June, but Gosden had him primed to perfection for the last race of his career and with a set of blinkers added for the first time. The four-year-old took a little time to settle, but accelerated six lengths clear of Crystal Ocean once Frankie Dettori gave him his head with two furlongs to run.
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