Yashin looks like a keeper following Sagaro success

Michael Bell is eyeing a tilt at Gold Cup glory with Yashin after his new recruit denied veteran stayer Coltrane a record third victory in the Longines Sagaro Stakes at Ascot.

Successful in the last two renewals of the Group Three event, the Andrew Balding-trained Coltrane was a 4-6 favourite to complete the hat-trick and appeared perfectly positioned for much of the two-mile contest as he sat in the slipstream of Divine Comedy, who set a sedate pace in front.

Coltrane was nudged into the lead passing the two-furlong marker, but was soon challenged by 11-1 shot Yashin, who was a high-class operator for Jessica Harrington before changing hands for 80,000 guineas in October and looks a shrewd purchase judged on this one-length success under Callum Shepherd.

Bell said: “He’d been working well and galloped at Chelmsford the other day and we were very happy with him. He went to Ascot in very good form, so we were hopeful of a very good run.

“He’s been in very good form since we’ve had him, so we were hopeful he would be involved definitely.”

Paddy Power cut Yashin to 8-1 from 33-1 for the Chester Cup on Friday week (May 9), but Bell – who won the 2017 Gold Cup with Big Orange – is leaning towards keeping his powder dry for Royal Ascot.

“I’ll talk to the owners. Chester would obviously be tempting with the penalty, as clearly he’s going to go up significantly more than 3lb, but my gut feeling is we’ll wait and maybe look at taking on Kyprios at the big meeting,” the Fitzroy House handler added.

“We didn’t enter him for the Gold Cup, but we discussed it beforehand and the winner of the Sagaro gets a free nomination. We said if we didn’t win the Sagaro, we didn’t want to run in the Gold Cup anyway and if he did win, we’d get the free nomination, so we put some thought into it and he could well go there.

“We’ve won the Gold Cup before and we’d like to win it again.”