First Royal Ascot winner for Harrington

Saturday 23 June 2018, 10:02am

Jessica Harrington has celebrated her first Royal Ascot winner with Alpha Centauri romping home in the Coronation Stakes.

The 71-year-old Harrington, best known as a National Hunt trainer, admitted being nervous before the 1600m-Group One race for three-year-old fillies, despite being used to success at the top level in races such as the Cheltenham Gold Cup, Champion Hurdle and Queen Mother Champion Chase.

Unlucky in the Albany Stakes last year, Alpha Centauri (11-4 fav) made amends in style.

Winner of the Irish 1000 Guineas, she left a strong field that included the victors of the English and French equivalents, Billesdon Brook and Teppal, trailing in her wake.

They were nowhere to be seen as Colm O'Donoghue guided his mount home by six lengths from Threading, with Veracious third.

"I'm relieved. I got very wound up," Harringotn said.

"I was very nervous today.

"It was nice going into the Irish Guineas very much under the radar. She hadn't run well on soft ground before that. I had confidence in her. She wants good ground, I don't think she goes on heavy ground.

"Today was different. She was favourite and we were there to be shot at."

Sir Michael Stoute's record-breaking exploits got better when he took the Commonwealth Cup with Eqtidaar (12-1), who held Sands Of Mali by half a length in the hands of Jim Crowley.

Having become the winning-most trainer at Royal Ascot, the Newmarket handler enjoyed his third success of the week in a race that was only inaugurated in 2015 and had previously eluded him.

Sydney jockey James McDonald's mount Equilateral finished 12th of the 22 runners.

– PAA

Latest News

Prime Thoroughbreds - We have a Host of Leaders in our Team

Tuesday, 29 June 2021

Prime Thor­ough­bred’s cur­rent rac­ing team is putt­ing to­gether quite a re­cord. We have 22 hors­es that have raced in our team at pre­sent. Six­teen of th­ese are win­n­ers in­clud­ing the Stakes win­n­ing trio Ru­bisa­ki, Fituese and Xtreme­time with Miss Di­vine Em and Miss In Charge run­n­ing 4th in Stakes races. This sees a stakes win­n­er to win­n­er ra­tio of 18.75% with a stake’s per­formed to win­n­er ra­tio of 31.25%. Th­ese are ex­cep­tio­n­al fig­ures.   More »

Freedmans land maiden Group One win

Saturday, 27 February 2021

Un­der-rat­ed fil­ly For­bid­den Love has emerged as an au­tumn car­ni­val smokey with a bril­liant per­for­mance to win the Sur­round Stakes at Rand­wick.  More »

Capriccio completes Damian Lane treble

Saturday, 27 February 2021

In a big day for coun­try-trained hors­es, War­r­nam­bool fil­ly Capric­cio has tak­en out the In­glis Dash for Daniel Bow­man.  More »

More news headlines »