Kind of amazing! A second Ascot Group 1 win for Wathnan

Three-year-old Kind Of Blue kept seasoned speedsters at bay to win a thrilling running of the Group 1 Qipco British Champions Sprint at Ascot. Hitting the front with a third of the contest still to run – the most demanding third, too, up that Ascot hill which has found out many a pretender in the two centuries (and more!) they’ve been racing here – the dark colt, without a white hair on him, had to be brave as the 20-runner cavalry amassed at his heels. What a win, and Wathnan’s second at the highest level in Europe, both coming here at Ascot after Courage Mon Ami’s Gold Cup victory last summer. Not a bad place to call your lucky track.

As the crowds gathered for Qipco British Champions Day, the rainclouds which had brought the softened ground cleared, leaving a sky which was also kind of blue. This is the richest day’s racing in Britain – and a new one, first held in 2011. The idea was to bring together end-of-season events previously run at two meetings, one at Newmarket, the other at Ascot, cherry-pick the highlights of both and put them on the more spectacular setting of the Royal racecourse in Berkshire. This sprint event was inaugurated in 1948, and run for many years as the Diadem Stakes, named after a great 1,000 Guineas-winning filly who went on to dominate the sprint division.

Kind Of Blue, who was having his debut in the peacock blue of Wathnan, is closely related to two previous winners of the British Champions Sprint: 2011 winner Deacon Blues and The Tin Man, successful in 2016, are his uncles, and both were trained by his handler James Fanshawe, too. If he was born to run, he was especially born to run here. This was only his seventh start, all in the past six months: he’s a sprinter of huge achievement, rated the best of his foal crop, but one who can reasonably be expected to get even better as he matures and gains more experience.