- Kingsclere handler neck and neck with Appleby for prize
- Surprise step up for Juddmonte International Stakes possible
Just three trainers have won the British Flat racing championship for the first time in the past 25 years, but there is increasing chance that another chair will be required at the sport’s top table after Andrew Balding’s filly Alcohol Free stormed past Poetic Flare, the favourite, in the final furlong to win the Group One Sussex Stakes here on Wednesday.
Balding is enjoying his best season since taking over the licence at from his father, Ian, in 2003, at the famous Kingsclere Stables near Watership Down where Mill Reef was prepared to win the Derby and Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in 1971. That was the season in which Ian Balding won his only trainers’ title. Half a century later his son is now neck-and-neck with Charlie Appleby at the top of the table having banked just over half a million pounds with this success on Wednesday.