QUEEN ALEXANDRA

STAKES

GORDON Elliott had every reason to celebrate on the beach at Barbados as Commissioned strode home in the closing Queen Alexandra Stakes.

It gave Ireland a record-breaking tenth success at the meeting, with the trainer opening his own account just three months after landing the Cheltenham Gold Cup.

Commissioned was shrewdly bought for £65,000 by the Nick Bradley Racing Nineteen Partnership after finishing in mid-division for John Ferguson in the Coral Cup at the NH Festival.

Some information is not readily to hand and Commissioned might not have started at 12/1, had punters known he won a 17-horse work-out at Punchestown not so long ago. Here, he made progress from the middle of the pack, closed down Seamus Durack’s unconsidered 40/1 chance Kayirli at the furlong pole and beat him by nearly two lengths, with Willie Mullins’ Clondaw Warrior and last year’s winner Oriental Fox saving most of the each-way money in third and fourth.

“Eddie O’Leary said: ‘If you buy him I’ll have a leg’,” Bradley recalled. “So I thought, let’s buy him, and we sent him to Gordon. He’d have gone for the Ascot Stakes but the ground was a bit soft so we waited for this.”

If it was a memorable day for Bradley and friends, it was an unforgettable week for winning jockey Adam Kirby. Two Group 1 wins, a closing triumph in one of the meeting’s most famous old races, and a baby son, Charlie, into the bargain.

This week must have seemed a slight anti-climax.