Racing isn’t an exact science, so QIPCO British Champions Day is never going to make perfect sense. For every Trawlerman you get a Powerful Glory, every Kalpana, a Cicero’s Gift.
It’s a stretch to suggest those 200/1 and 100/1 shock winners are the sort of result you take in your stride or that they brought silence to the Ascot stands. But they were a significant narrative on an afternoon of relentless action.
And for the two winning trainers, a split-second which rescued testing seasons.
Richard Fahey is someone I know well, and I’ve seen and felt at close quarters his frustration at a 2025 campaign that never gathered momentum, the stream of winners you expect to start flowing from the spring onwards, barely getting above a trickle.
He said to me on Friday he was ready to write the year off and start again in 2026. Then Powerful Glory wins for one of his major owners and the sun shines again. That mattered to him and the hard-working team back home at Musley Bank and you return to the press room with a big smile on your face to write it up despite not having had a penny on.
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