Horse Racing: Glorious Goodwood: Perfect Fillip From Pivotal

Pivotal Point burst past the leaders to win the 28-runner Stewards' Cup by a length and a quarter from Fantasy Believer under the in-form Seb Sanders and land a gamble from a morning 12-1 to 7-1 co-favourite.

This was just the fillip that Pivotal Point's trainer Peter Makin has been yearning for after a desperate couple of years in which his horses have suffered from various ailments - mainly virus related - at his yard at Ogbourne Maisey, near Marlborough. Makin said: 'This is the first time my horses have been right for a couple of years and I can hold my head up again.'

And Makin certainly knows how to train sprinters, as his record with horses such as double King's Stand winner Elbio, Wokingham winner Powder Blue, Treasure Kay and Manimstar down the years shows. Pivotal Point, now four, was sent to him at the end of his two-year-old season after an unhappy time when trained by Linda Perratt in Scotland. The horse's problem was an aversion to the stalls. Three times he went to the races and three times he played up at the start and had to be withdrawn.

The last time he was badly injured and returned in the horse ambulance.

As soon as Pivotal Point reached Wiltshire, Makin took the decision to have him gelded to calm him down and engaged the horse 'whisperer' Gary Witherford to teach the newcomer to go in the stalls and come out the other side without trying to demolish them.

Witherford taught his pupil well and Makin says that while Pivotal Point is still put in last, he gives no trouble.

Trainers can choose their draw for the Stewards' Cup, unlike nearly all other races apart from the Lincoln, as their horses' names come out of the drum. When the draw was made, it was considered by most, including Makin, that a high draw would be an advantage and the trainer considers himself lucky, saying: 'If we had come out early we would have gone high but we came out nineteenth, so chose stall one and luckily most of the front-runners were on our side.'

The last four winners of this race have been drawn high but this year clerk of the course, Seamus Buckley, was adamant that any draw bias had been eliminated by his policy of selectively watering the track and Friday's two sprint handicaps were won by horses drawn low, causing opinions on the best place to be to be split.

Buckley was right. Another of the 7-1 co-favourites, High Reach, dominated the far-side group with Kieren Fallon doing the steering until Fantasy Believer's late surge for second place and that pair finished just in front of the lowly-drawn three-year-old Two Step Kid.

On the stands' side, Sanders, whose forty-third winner this was of an extraordinary month, was tracking the trailblazing Raccoon, Artie and Smokin Beau. Sanders had told Makin he would not be able to come up the rail as he felt Raccoon, drawn two, would hang to his left and things went exactly to plan. Just over a furlong out, he made his race-winning move and, despite hanging right, never looked like being pegged back.

Makin was able to quip: 'It didn't matter if we had been drawn in Chichester, Seb could win from anywhere at the moment.' He added: 'It is lovely now he has won, but it is a horrible race, isn't it? A lottery.' There were a few who joined in the gamble who might disagree.

If Sanders is in fine form, then so is Jimmy Fortune, who received the Racing UK Trophy from Lester Piggott for the five-day meeting's leading rider when landing his fourth win of the week on Fong's Thong, making all to beat Mandobi two lengths in the Thoroughbred Stakes for Brian Meehan.

Fortune nearly made it five when bringing Silence Is Golden with a withering late run, which failed by a short head to take him past Favourable Terms and Fallon in the Nassau Stakes.

For Fallon, who would be forgiven for casting a glance over his shoulder at Sanders in the jockeys' title race, it was the first winner of a wretched week and he had the sting in the tail of a one-day ban for careless riding.

This was a Group One event only in name as Favourable Terms, who suffers from back problems, was annihilated by Soviet Song and Attraction in the Falmouth Stakes at Newmarket, but it was still one of the most exciting races of the Glorious Goodwood meeting.

Fallon had a protracted battle with Darryll Holland on Chorist, squeezing his rival closer to the rails in the closing stages as Silence Is Golden closed on the outside.

Winning trainer Sir Michael Stoute, was echoing the views of many punters when he said: 'Kieren was brilliant there but not so good once or twice earlier in the week.'