North Yorkshire trainer Ann Duffield reflects on Glorious Goodwood - and a surprise winner over jumps

GLORIOUS Goodwood was as “glorious” as ever - particularly Middleham trainer Mark Johnston who became the leading trainer at the meeting for the ninth time.

Mark saddled five winners, including a hugely impressively display of pure speed from Yalta, who broke the track record in this year’s renewal of the Group 3 Molecomb Stakes.

And, to ensure he had the race well and truly in the bag, he also finished second in the race with “The Last Lion”.

Mick Easterby saddled the ever popular Hoof It to win Qatar Sprint stakes, a consolation race for the Stewards Cup which Hoof It had won back in 2011. It was great to see him show plenty of his old sparkle when landing this year’s class 2 event run over six furlongs, while compounding the misery of bookmakers with the nine-year-old being the subject of a massive gamble from 8-1 from 20-1.

Not only was a great day for team Easterby, but the result was extra special for his jockey, 5lb claimer Nathan Evans, who was scoring the biggest win of his career on his 19th Birthday. Now that’s what I call a birthday celebration.

For northern trainers, it was a clean sweep as Related, trained by Paul Midgely, was second, with the Richard Fahey trained Nuno Tristan in third place.

LAST week also saw northern veteran and dual Nunthorpe Stakes winner “Borderlescott” retire.

It’s actually the second time he’s retired, having originally called it a day in 2012. He hadn’t enjoyed retirement as much as connections might have liked because he returned to the track the following year and raced for Rebecca Bastiman until last month.

Borderlescott is now 13-years-old and has won the Group 1 Nunthorpe in 2008 and 2009 when trained by Bastiman's now-retired father Robin. He also landed the Stewards' Cup in 2006 and, overall, he won 14 races, earning nearly £800,000 in prize-money.

He has been a credit to the northern ranks and I hope he has a long and happy retirement.

AIDAN O’Brien’s training career has been nothing short of extraordinary as he has rampaged through the history books.

To add to the plaudits, he has now earned the title of the winning most trainer of Group 1 races of all time. Mind you, records in horse racing are never quite that simple. Legendary Australian trainer Tommy Smith is commonly cited as the man who held the record for the most Group or Grade 1 wins, with 279 to his name.

However, the “Pattern” system, which introduced the idea of grading races was not established in Europe until 1971 and later still in Australasia and North America.

So many of Tommy Smith’s wins were counted as Group 1 victories when, in fact, they were not actually Group 1 races at the time.

After last week’s Goodwood meeting where Aidan O’Brien saddled the winners of both Group 1 races, the Racing Post database has rightly placed him firmly at the top with an unbelievable 282 Group 1 winners.

IT’S not very often that we send horses hurdling from our yard so Heaven Scent was a nice surprise when she won the first race at Market Rasen on Sunday.

Ridden by Colm McCormack, the three-year-old chestnut filly, got a bump at the first flight but led after the last to win at the very rewarding odds of 50-1.

She’s a nice filly and still young so, hopefully, there’s more to come from her, although I can’t see her being a 50-1 shot next time.