Aidan O’Brien brought up his 100th career winner at Royal Ascot in the meeting’s feature race, as Scandinavia got up in the final strides to win a thrilling renewal of the Gold Cup.

It appeared for much of the final furlong that last year’s winner Trawlerman – who wore ski goggles in the paddock to protect his sensitive eyes from the sun – was going to hold off his younger rival.

However, having not had a run so far this season, the last 50 yards of the stamina-sapping two and a half miles caught up with Trawlerman, with last season’s St Leger winner Scandinavia (11/8 favourite) wearing him down under Ryan Moore to win right on the line.

It was certainly not a result the bookmakers were cheering, with Star Sports reporting a £120,000 win bet on O’Brien’s four-year-old at odds of 5/2.

“It’s very special, it’s a very special day for myself and everybody in Ballydoyle,” said O’Brien, whose first winner at the meeting was Harbour Master in 1997.

“There are so many people involved to help a horse get this far. Ryan gave him an absolute class, peach ride.

“That’s just incredible really (100 Royal Ascot) winners, it’s something that we wouldn’t dream of thinking about because for that to happen you could not believe.

“Even this week, it’s literally one race at a time and you don’t even think what it could be or whether it could happen because it’s so competitive, so hard to win races here.”

He went on: “We knew the second horse was a great horse, very brave. He joined him and you don’t know until you go past that two furlong marker what’s really going to happen but we felt he was very brave, he always showed that in every race, he’s relentless, he cruises.

“It’s an honour and a privilege for me to be involved with the team and be the small part that I am with everybody. The reality is everyone puts in the work and we watch it going on and I can’t tell you how grateful we are to everybody.”