Cracksman outstanding as Gosden looks ready to roll

Centre of attention: Cracksman and Frankie Dettori are led back by owner Anthony Oppenheimer (brown hat) after winning the G1 Prix Ganay at Longchamp on Sunday. Photo: John Gilmore

Surprisingly, just one trainer landed more than one Group or Graded race around the world last week. You’d have thought that would at least consolidated John Gosden in sixth place in the world rankings, but in fact he dropped to #7.

The Newmarket handler was a victim of the fierce points surge over in Hong Kong. While the double meant Gosden gained two points, but that was dwarfed by the lofty tally of John Size (+10), who leapfrogged him to go sixth.

Not that Gosden would have been unduly bothered. His two winners were promising G3 Sandown Classic Trial scorer Sevenna Star, and Cracksman, who produced a tour de force in winning the first European G1 of the year, the Prix Ganay, at the newly reopened Longchamp (see video below).

The son of Frankel was allotted an RPR of 124 - the highest in the world last week, particularly impressive considering Gosden has clearly left plenty to work on before his big targets of the next few months.

With the kind of ammunition at his disposal, Gosden can be expected to begin a steady climb up the rankings as the European season gathers pace, although he has considerable ground to make up if he’s to catch the current British #1, Charlie Appleby, such has been the vigour of the Godolphin man’s global campaign of late. The gap is currently 16 points.

The 27 races last week that count towards the TRC Global Rankings went to 27 different sires. These included Cracksman’s sire, Frankel, who moved past Deep Impact to #4 in the world after a four-point gain. For those keeping score, he now has sired four G1 winners (surely any critics have now shut up shop and left town) and a total of 24 Group and Graded winners in total from only 114 runners. That's a 21 percent strike rate.

Click here for a list of all last week’s biggest TRC Global Rankings points gainers.

Click here for a list of all the week’s Group and Graded winners.

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