Battaash battles to Nunthorpe success and four-timer for Jim Crowley at York

The explosive brilliance which Battaash brought to the Nunthorpe Stakes 12 months ago was missing here on Friday, but in its place was a grit and unwillingness to concede defeat that prompted Charlie Hills, his trainer, to call it “the best win of his career.” Battaash had rain-softened ground, a howling gale and an unexpectedly quick rival to deal with in the outsider Que Amoro, yet by a hard-fought length, he finally got the job done.

Que Amoro, a four-year-old filly, was making her debut at Group One level on Friday, against one of the fastest sprinters of recent decades, and she had failed to read the script. Battaash tends to take a field apart by halfway, but with just two of the five furlongs to run, Que Amoro was still a couple of lengths in front of the 1-2 favourite and flying along against the stands’ rail, with the welcome assistance of a 40mph tailwind.

Battaash, by contrast, was forced to make ground on a much softer surface than he usually encounters, and a lesser horse might have called it a day. Instead, he got to work and ground out the fourth Group One win of his career by a length, with another outsider in Moss Gill back in third.

“The second showed amazing speed,” Hills said, “and with the tailwind it can be hard to reel them in, so I knew it was going to be tough. I’m so proud of him today, I probably think it was the best run of his career as conditions were against him. He had to knuckle down and work really hard.”

Battaash’s first Group One win came in the Prix de l’Abbaye at Chantilly in 2017, but he has been beaten in the race for the last two years back in its traditional home at Longchamp. That is still the likely target for the six-year-old now, however, while a trip to the US for the Breeders’ Cup has not been ruled out entirely.

“The Abbaye is the obvious route to take,” Hills said. “If the ground is [heavy] like last year then we’d probably avoid it and look elsewhere. [The Breeders’ Cup] is definitely going to be a decision from Sheikh Hamdan [Battaash’s owner] himself. Plan A is definitely to go to France, then, who knows? The world we’re living in at the moment, it’s not easy to have too many set-in-stone plans.”

Que Amoro is not entered for the Abbaye but could be supplemented after her big run here. “To get that close to a horse like that is a hell of a performance,” Michael Dods, her trainer, said. “That’s the only way to ride her, she burns horses off.”

Battaash’s win completed a 127-1 four-timer for Jim Crowley, his jockey, in the first four races on the card, including an impressive success in the Group Two Gimcrack Stakes aboard Owen Burrows’s Minzaal, a son of the first-season sire, Mehmas.

This was Burrows’s first Group-race success with a juvenile and it will be no great surprise if Minzaal is also his first Group One winner over the next few weeks. Despite the conditions and a slightly awkward start, Minzaal cruised through the field on a tight rein in the middle part of the race and then quickened clear to win by a very comfortable two lengths.

“Jim said he couldn’t believe how well he was going,” Burrows said afterwards. “If anything he got there too soon, but there was nothing else he could do. I think he’s all speed, I don’t think he needs to be going further than six furlongs, so we’ll be looking at the Middle Park [on 26 September] rather than the Dewhurst and it will be straight there. I don’t see him as a Guineas horse [next season], more Commonwealth Cup and Jim thinks that, too.”