Racing: Dettori's late swoop clips Hawk's wings

The result of the Irish Champion Stakes at Leopardstown – Grandera for Godolphin beating Hawk Wing for Ballydoyle by a short-head – was almost overshadowed by the pre-race tensions yesterday. The script was the usual Group One clash of the sport's behemoths, but with the twist that this was the afternoon when the Irish operation's A team were back in the crucible of top-level competition after more than a month's absence through illness.

Their steel had to be taken on trust and when two of them, Sophisticat in a supporting race at the Co Dublin track and Landseer behind Invincible Spirit in the Haydock Sprint Cup, capitulated without firing a shot, Aidan O'Brien went into worry overdrive on behalf of his biggest gun. And the gamble of letting Hawk Wing take his chance so nearly paid off. It took an inch-perfect ride from Frankie Dettori, on a horse who had already won two Group One races this year and is now the runaway leader of the World Series, to thwart him with the last bob of a head at the end of the 10 furlongs.

Hawk Wing looked in tremendous fettle in the preliminaries, but then so did Grandera. The chestnut four-year-old, who had followed his Singapore Cup and Prince of Wales's Stakes successes with a lacklustre fifth in the King George six weeks ago, has been unflatteringly described by Dettori as the horse with no brain. But his brawn is not lacking.

After Hawk Wing's pacemaker, Sholokhov, had set such a furious gallop that he was still half a furlong clear on the turn in, Dettori took the rhythm of his race from his own hare, Best Of The Bests. And as the four horses, two from each camp, formed up in the straight for the dénouement, it was as if there were two races being run in parallel.

Best Of The Bests went past Sholokhov inside the final furlong, Hawk Wing cruised up to him and gained a half-length ascendancy but, in the last five strides, Mick Kinane became the dark-blue filling in a royal-blue sandwich as Dettori's final flourish landed the prize by the width of Grandera's flared nostril.

"I thought I had got up," said Dettori, "but he is a peculiar character. Sometimes he goes, sometimes not, and today he was looking at the crowd and then at Hawk Wing before deciding he'd co-operate and go for the line. He has loads of talent, and I like him for what he is."

Grandera may now be aimed at the Australian leg of the World Series, next month's Cox Plate.

The Leopardstown race was a mirror of last year's result, when Godolphin's Fantastic Light beat Galileo, the pride of Co Tipperary, after another tactical thriller. Kinane was disappointed at Hawk Wing's narrow defeat but put it down just to ring-rustiness.

"He just got a little tired in those last strides," the jockey said, "and perhaps the gallop we were asked to chase was a little searching. You're never sure what will happen after they come back after a lay-off and he just got there a little empty, and there was nothing left to repel Frankie."

The Ballydoyle standard will be handed on today to Rock Of Gibraltar, going for a record seventh successive Group One victory in Europe in the Prix du Moulin at Longchamp, a task that will be no pushover with star fillies Banks Hill and Gossamer among his six rivals.

Although both were pretty near the head of the queue when athletic gifts were handed out, he and Hawk Wing are not out of the same mould. The two colts are stabled next to each other at Ballydoyle and a look into their boxes during their morning dressing-over is enough to reveal their differences in personality.

Hawk Wing, the handsome, the imperious, standing relaxed with his head tied by his rack chain to the back wall, barely deigns to recognise the idiot clucking from the doorway as his admirers try to catch his attention. He flicks an ear, shifts his weight from one powerful quarter to another, gives a cool glance back over his shoulder.

But there's no side to Rock Of Gibraltar. He, too, is tied up but at the first hint of human company he swings round sideways with his head turned to see who's there, ears pricked and eyes full of interest. He does not have Hawk Wing's classical physique, but his generous attitude has been apparent all season as he has gone about his job, racing with enthusiasm and apparent active enjoyment.

Numerically, Sir Alex Ferguson's three-year-old is already in élite company – success in the Sussex Stakes at Goodwood in July brought him level with Mill Reef and, although he is not as good or versatile as that great champion, a record is a record and we wish him well.