Darley Yorkshire Oaks (Group 1)

ALPINISTA (Sir Mark Prescott/Luke Morris) has been a revelation in Germany and France over the past year, gaining four Group 1 wins, and she took her winning streak to seven races when landing the Yorkshire Oaks in typically gutsy fashion, repelling the rally of Oaks heroine Tuesday (Aidan O’Brien/Ryan Moore) to score by a length at odds of 7/4. La Petite Coco (Paddy Twomey/Billy Lee) was beaten 2¾ lengths in total in third place.

Kirsten Rausing’s homebred five-year-old mare was runner-up to Love in this race in 2020, and has kept progressing steadily since then, taking the scalp of future Arc winner Torquator Tasso last term, and most recently successful in the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud.

Pouncing distance

Irish Oaks winner Magical Lagoon and fellow raider La Petite Coco led the seven-strong field in the early stages, with Luke Morris happy to track the leaders and within pouncing distance. Magical Lagoon weakened early in the straight, and Morris produced Alpinista to tackle La Petite Coco at the quarter-mile marker. Alpinista had turned that rival away a furlong out, only for Tuesday to launch a late bid towards the inner, and she had to dig deep to maintain her lead to the line.

This was a first domestic Group 1 success for Prescott since Marsha landed the Nunthorpe here five years ago, and he looked as pleased as if it was his first ever.

“They are all great, but they hard to come by,” said the veteran Newmarket handler when asked how special a Group 1 win on home soil was. “For a smallish stable, every five or six years you get good ones come along and it’s tremendous when it happens. We trained this one’s dam, grand-dam, and great grand-dam. It’s been a marvellous family.

“The original intention was to go Coronation Cup and King George, but she wouldn’t come in her coat in time for the Coronation, so it then became Saint-Cloud. Miss Rausing was very keen to come here as she [Alpinista] hadn’t won a Group 1 in England.

“Last year we rather patted ourselves on the back for being so clever winning three Group 1s in Germany, then when the one behind us came and won the Arc we rather felt we might not have been as clever as we thought we were! When she stayed in training this year that was always the aim.”