With half a furlong to run in the Coronation Stakes, it seemed that the race would live up to its name and confirm Ryan Moore as the outright holder of the record for the most winners at a Royal meeting. Instead, there was a reminder that several more members of the global riding elite are in action this week, as Christophe Soumillon swept through the field on Ervedya to catch Moore and his mount Found a few strides from the post.
Soumillon has had a somewhat troubled relationship with Ascot in the past, even in victory. His success in the 2006 King George on Hurricane Run was followed by a gesture involving a finger and his backside, which was variously seen as a message for the jockeys behind him, the Ascot crowd, or perhaps just anyone who had ever done him wrong. Controversy also followed his win on Cirrus Des Aigles in the 2011 Champion Stakes, when he was initially fined his £55,000 cut of the prize money for one stroke of the whip above a strict new limit.
In the end, Soumillon got his money, though not before he had made it plain in a television interview that he felt those responsible for the rules were unhinged, and the stewards little better than muggers in smart suits. But then, Soumillon has always enjoyed a touch of theatre in a winning performance, and famously threw his helmet and whip into the crowd after winning the 2008 Arc on the unbeaten Zarkava. Ervedya’s victory in the same colours of the Aga Khan was another achieved with a flourish.
Surprisingly, it was also Soumillon’s first success at the Royal meeting at Ascot itself, since his only previous win, aboard Valixir in the 2005 Queen Anne Stakes, was recorded when the meeting switched to York during the Berkshire course’s redevelopment. Given the length of his career and the quality of the horses he has ridden, it was an odd gap to be outstanding on Soumillon’s record, but at least it was finally closed with a typically well-judged Soumillon swoop.
“I came many times with horses with nice chances, but you need to come here with a champion to win,” Soumillon said. “And sometimes you ride a champion but he’s not in great shape. I knew she had a good turn of foot so I just wanted to try to follow one or two good fillies to bring me to the final furlong. At the entrance to the straight, I saw that Ryan was going very easily on Found and that around her everybody was a bit [tired] and I thought that I’d find a gap. When I came through, she gave me the turn of foot to make it right on the line.
“Irish and English horses are very tough when you have to fight, so I prefer with a French filly like her to come one time and at the latest moment.”
Ervedya beat Found by a neck to give Jean-Claude Rouget, her trainer, his first Royal Ascot winner in one of the Group One feature events of the meeting.
“After she won the [French] Guineas, I had only this race in mind,” Rouget said. “I wanted to win a Group One at Ascot and now it’s done.”
The first running of the Group One Commonwealth Cup, a six-furlong sprint for three-year-olds, looked a more competitive event than the Coronation Stakes on paper, but Charlie Hills’s Muhaarar routed the field by three-and-three-quarter lengths to establish himself as the leading sprinter of his generation.
“He’s the best horse I’ve trained,” Hills said afterwards. “Chriselliam [a juvenile winner at the Breeders’ Cup meeting] was very good but this horse is just improving and improving. This is a Group One and it looked a proper race as well, any one of eight or 10 could have won. But he did it in such great style. He’s got the world at his feet.”
Muhaarar is now 6-1 joint-favourite for the July Cup at Newmarket next month, the season’s all-aged sprint championship event.
