Merchant Navy survives rough passage to win Diamond Jubilee at Royal Ascot

A lot of drama can be packed into 72 seconds, as racegoers learned on Saturday while trying to absorb everything that happened in a wild Diamond Jubilee Stakes, won in a head‑bobbing finish by Merchant Navy.

He would have been an unlucky loser having been shunted sideways by the third horse in the closing stages. But the runner-up, City Light, surely beat himself by rearing as the stalls opened while Harry Angel detonated any chance he had with his pre-race antics which reached a climax when he stuck a hind foot on a ledge along the side of the stalls shortly before they clanged open in front of him.

Paddock watchers knew Harry Angel, the 5-2 favourite, was making things hard for himself from the trouble he gave as Adam Kirby was trying to mount him. He continued to play up in the stalls, kicking out with his hind legs, which was how he got his foot wedged awkwardly and sustained an injury, the extent of which will only become clear on Sunday.

“Adam couldn’t see, because the horse had his stalls rug on,” Harry Angel’s trainer, Clive Cox, said. “The starter can’t see that, either.

“It’s a dreadful shame. He got quite a bad puncture wound on his hind leg. It was very sore when he came off the track. So I just hope we can get him back as quickly as possible. With his leg being up on the side when the stalls opened, I’m worried that he might have pulled something high up, but we won’t know for an hour or two.”

Harry Angel lost many lengths at the start, with Kirby looking round in the first few strides as if sensing something had gone wrong, but City Light made an even worse beginning to this race.

As soon as the stalls opened he was up on his hind legs, giving everything else a start, though he reached top gear remarkably quickly after returning to earth and was within two lengths of the eventual winner after perhaps a furlong.

“It didn’t look a race to begin with as there were horses everywhere,” said City Light’s trainer, Stephane Wattel. City Light gave the Deauville‑based Wattel his first British success after 27 years as a trainer when he won on all-weather finals day in March. Here, he came within inches of giving Wattel his first Group One race success anywhere.

Instead, Merchant Navy did just enough to hold on after shrugging off the wayward US runner Bound For Nowhere, who leaned on him in the final furlong. The winner has only been trained for a matter of months by Aidan O’Brien, having been Australian-based until the spring. His former owners still have a stake in him and their celebrations were among the most raucous of the week here.

His first trainer in Australia, Ciaron Maher, was present to see the colt make good on the promise he showed when based with him at Caulfield. While he is bound to reflect on what might have been if the horse stayed with him, Maher seemed genuinely elated.

“They sold him for a fairly healthy sum. You can’t have your cake and eat it, but it’s just great to see the horse win. He’s come through our system. Now, to do it up here, he’s going to have a good time at stud. He’s going to be very busy in both hemispheres.

“He’s got an unbelievable set of lungs and I think he’s still developing. He was a later foal. Look at the horse, he’d be better again next year.”

Maher had hoped to have a runner at the Royal meeting last year until his Jameka fell ill. He promised to come back one day with a contender of his own. “It’s an unbelievable atmosphere and racecourse. It doesn’t get any bigger than this.”

O’Brien’s aim now is to persuade Merchant Navy’s owners to let the horse stay with him at his Ballydoyle yard for long enough to run in next month’s July Cup at Newmarket. “The plan was that he’d run here and then go back to Australia, as I think there’s a lot of mares waiting on him there,” the Irishman said.

He had thought the colt faced an “impossible” task at the weights with Redkirk Warrior, who beat him in Australia in March, but that rival was very disappointing and ran as though he had not coped well with his journey round the world.

Royal Ascot-winning jockey fails breath test

A jockey who did a sponsorship deal with a pub was stood down from competing at Royal Ascot. Charles Bishop, who started this week on such a high by winning the Queen Anne on the 33-1 shot Accidental Agent, was reported by the stewards to be above the threshold level for breath samples and had to give up his four booked mounts.

“He’s ashamed and disappointed,” said Eve Johnson Houghton, the trainer of Accidental Agent, who had booked him to ride her Ice Age in the Wokingham Handicap. “Let’s hope he only does it once. It’s disappointing for him. They tell me he was only just over the limit. If his first ride had been in the second race rather than the first, he might well have passed.”

Bishop declined to comment when contacted by the Racing Post.

The news is tinged with irony, in view of a sponsorship deal Bishop struck two years ago with the George & Dragon pub at Upton, close to the West Ilsley stables of his main employer, Mick Channon. Bishop posed for pictures at the time with the pub name written down the side of his breeches, but the deal has presumably lapsed as he was wearing plain breeches for Accidental Agent’s success.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for Ascot said he had been pleased by how few incidents of bad behaviour there had been when the total attendance was expected to exceed 300,000. “There’s been evictions for the use of drugs,” Nick Smith said. “We’re perfectly up front about that. It’s minimal in the context of the crowd but it’s an important message that, yes, people have been evicted.”

Smith said advance warning of the use of sniffer dogs had got a point across to racegoers about bringing drugs to the races. “Racing has acted very responsibly, hasn’t hidden from the issue. It’s not racing’s issue in isolation but we have to address it. Like Epsom for Derby day, we’ve got right on the front foot and, as we speak at the present moment, with good results.”