Hamish lifts Lodge honours with ease at Ascot

Hamish produced a career-best effort with an easy victory in the Peroni Nastro Azzurro Cumberland Lodge Stakes at Ascot.

Pat Dobbs could not have had a more simple task in the Group Three contest, as the six-year-old Motivator gelding travelled like a dream throughout.

Always in the front rank, tracking the pace set by Third Realm, backers of the 11-10 favourite never had a moment’s worry, as Dobbs barely had to move a muscle in the mile-and-a-half contest.

A ready winner of the Ormonde Stakes at Chester in May and an excellent runner-up in the Irish St Leger, he looked the form pick in the field of nine and duly obliged, cruising past the gallant Cresta (4-1) inside the final furlong for a length-and-a-quarter success, with fellow Haggas inmate Candleford staying on a further neck back in third.

Maureen Haggas, assistant and wife to trainer William Haggas, has recently recovered from a neck injury sustained in a gallops fall in August.

She said: “He’s my favourite. I ride him when I can ride and I ride him all the time. I love him. He just seems to get better.

“He loves this soft ground. He is in the St Simon, which is a Group Three, so he will have four penalties. He doesn’t stay the long trip here. So, we will have to see.

“He has run three times (this season), won two and was second in a Group One. He has just got to hang around until I am allowed to ride again, poor boy!”

Dobbs added: “He is just getting better. He is a class horse and he loved that ground.

“There is always the concern that one will come by on the inside and you don’t see them, but he travelled so well and I was asked to leave it late on him. That’s what we did.”

Cresta stayed on nicely under David Probert and he will now likely be put away until next season.

Freddie Meade, who trains in partnership with his father, Martyn, said: “We have to be pleased with that.

“You don’t beat horses like that who can travel so well. I think that will be his lot for the season as there isn’t much for him now.”