MARK Johnston’s filly Rose Of Kildare was the first British challenger for a European classic this season when she went to Dusseldorf to contest the Group 2 Wempe 100th German 1000 Guineas on Sunday.

The Make Believe filly had been down the field in the Qipco 1000 Guineas in Newmarket but finished well this time after a troubled passage through the race and just missed snatching second place from the fancied home contender No Limit Credit.

Rose Of Kildare broke smartly under Ioritz Mendizabal before being shuffled back.

Victory in the mile classic went to Lancade, a British-bred daughter of Areion trained by Yasmin Almenrader and ridden by Adries De Vries; she won by a length and three quarters.

Lancade is the first home-trained winner since 2015. Johnston had won the last two runnings with Nyaleti and Main Edition.

Hong Kong

Fantastic four for Purton

ZAC Purton struck a four-timer at Happy Valley on Wednesday that left his great rival Joao Moreira with a mountainous task in the jockeys’ title race and also put Francis Lui right back into champion trainer reckoning.

Moreira narrowed the gap on Purton to three wins with an early success but the reigning champ hit back with four winners, all trained by Lui.

The Australian’s four-timer took him to 136 wins, seven clear of the Brazilian with six meetings left this season. Moreira will only ride at five of those with a suspension ruling him out of the third-to-last fixture on July 8th.

“There’s a long way to go; a long way to go. Joao is such a great rider that you can never write him off,” Purton said.

Australia

Owners back on track

OWNERS were allowed to return to Victorian tracks under strict protocols, starting with the Ballarat meeting last Tuesday.

Owners with runners engaged on the day can attend after a wide range of essential protocols have been gone through.

They must to depart the racecourse following the race in which their final runner is engaged and a maximum of 30 owners per race are allowed, with pre-registration required and compulsory provision of details on the day for contact tracing.

“Owners are essential to our sport.We are delighted that we now have a framework that allows us to start welcoming owners back to race meetings when their horse is engaged.” Racing Victoria chief executive Giles Thompson said.