RACING/Royal Ascot report:Sagaro's status as the sole triple winner of the Ascot Gold Cup could be in some danger next year after Yeats recorded back to back victories in the stayers championship with an emphatic success under Michael Kinane yesterday.
The odds on Irish favourite was never in serious danger throughout the two and a half marathon and ran out a comfortable winner from Geordieland with the 50 to 1 outsider Le Miracle back in third.
Yeats became the 10th double Gold Cup winner in the last 40 years and although Aidan O'Brien didn't immediately commit his star six-year-old to another season in training, Kinane had little doubt Yeats is capable of matching Sagaro's achievement from the 1970's.
"I think he can come back and win again. He enjoys his racing, he's sound and he would certainly be the one they would all have to beat," said the rider who was notching his own third Gold Cup triumph.
"He settled beautifully and he took me into a good position. I knew he would get three or four lengths out of them when he quickened and I knew it was unlikely anything could get past him," Kinane added.
Yeats was made only 9 to 4 to complete a hat-trick in 2008 and is 10 to 1 to make up for last year's unsuccessful trip to Australia in the Melbourne Cup.
Kinane, a Melbourne Cup winner on Vintage Crop, warned however: "The thing about Melbourne is that they will pile the weight on him there. Ideally you would like to go down there with a little bit up your sleeve!" O'Brien didn't rule out another trip Down Under, however, and said: "He is a very classy horse and is getting better with age. He has developed more acceleration and was only dossing in front today."
The old firm of O'Brien and Kinane were fancied to also pick up the Norfolk Stakes with the previously unbeaten Warsaw but the colt faded badly and beat only one home behind the Peter Chapple-Hyam trained favourite Winker Watson.
"We just got away with it because he wants further. We could have run in the Coventry but the plan all along was this. He is still quite green and will be better over further," said the trainer who supplied Jimmy Fortune with his fifth winner of the week.
The Irish Oaks could be a possibility for the five length Ribblesdale winner Silkwood after Michael Jarvis's filly hammered the Ballydoyle favourite All My Loving.
"She's a hugely talented filly and we were keen on her for Epsom only that the ground turned soft. We knew there was an alternative here and she has always shown us immense talent," beamed the trainer.
John Murtagh added to his Queen Mary victory on Elletelle when powering the topweight Eddie Jock home in the Britannia Handicap for an unlikely 33 to 1 success.
"I thought it was mission impossible off that weight," admitted trainer Michael Bell after the narrow defeat of Ea.
Aidan O'Brien was doubly represented in the Hampton Court Stakes but both Chinese Whisper and Trinity College didn't figure behind the narrow Mark Johnston-trained winner Zaham.
