OKAY, so the weather wasn’t great and the ground was soft, but Qipco British Champions Day at Ascot last Saturday was still a success.

It had the right ingredients: top class racehorses. Enable was obviously missing and Ulysses was a 10th-hour scratching, and we were missing the five-furlong speedballs, Battaash and Marsha and Lady Aurelia, but we had the best six-furlong horses and the best milers and the best fillies (outside of Enable) and the best middle-distance horses (outside of Enable and Ulysses).

The human victors too enhanced the ‘champion’ theme: John Gosden and Aidan O’Brien and Ryan Moore and Frankie Dettori, and a refreshing breakthrough Group 1 win by Dean Ivory.

Dettori lights up Ascot like Dettori lights up nowhere else, and any Ascot meeting at which he has a Group 1 double is well on its way to success before another ball is kicked.

Add that to an outlandish performance by Cracksman in the Champion Stakes itself, a race in which, according to Timeform, he clocked a faster time for the final furlong (after running nine) than any other horse clocked on the day, even after running just five or seven. The headline writers on Saturday evening were spoiled for choice.

WELL-POSITIONED MEETING

British Champions Day has now embedded itself nicely into the European Pattern and into the international calendar. Irish Champions Weekend in Ireland in mid-September, Arc weekend in France in early October, British Champions Day in Britain in mid-October, Breeders’ Cup weekend in America in early November.

You don’t have to run at all four meetings, but you can. Found ran at all four in 2015 and again in 2016, and has a Breeders’ Cup Turf and an Arc de Triomphe to show for it.

Indeed, she only finished outside the first three once and only twice finished outside the first two in those eight runs.

This year, Hydrangea won the Matron Stakes in Ireland, was beaten a head by Rhododendron in the Prix de l’Opera in France, and won the Fillies & Mare Stakes in Britain.

Order Of St George won the Irish Leger, finished fourth in the Arc and won the Long Distance Cup. Ribchester won the Prix du Moulin, finished second in the QE2 and is now on track for America. It’s tough to do all four meetings – you don’t happen upon a filly like Found very often – but to run at three, and to run your race at three, is more than possible.