Gold Ship won the biggest race of his 2014 campaign in the Grade 1 Takarazuka Kinen at Hanshin Racecourse in Japan last June, the highlight of a season that included a 14^th place finish in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in Paris last October.

This year, Gold Ship has rebounded from that loss, winning his last two starts, including the Grade 1 spring running of the Tenno Sho at Kyoto Racecourse on May 3. The recent win makes Gold Ship the favorite to win the Takarazuka Kinen for the second consecutive year when the $2,347,348 race is run on Sunday.

Treve already has earned a place in racing history as the winner of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp Racecourse in Paris in 2013 and 2014. On Sunday, the 5-year-old Treve will start at a racecourse a matter of miles from Longchamp when she runs in the $448,000 Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud against males.

The Group 1 Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud, run at 1 1/2 miles on turf, will be the second start of the year for Treve. She won the Group 2 Prix Corrida Stakes at Saint-Cloud by four lengths May 29.

It’s a fair assumption that no Group or Grade 1 race anywhere in the world has been dominated by a trainer to the extent Aidan O’Brien has owned the Irish Derby. O’Brien won the race seven years in a row before fellow Irishman Jim Bolger won in 2013 with Trading Leather, but O’Brien was back on top last season with Australia, giving him eight wins in nine years and 10 in the last 14.

Another Royal Ascot meeting, another milestone for trainer Wesley Ward, who continues to defy the widely held notion that European horses are simply better on turf than their American counterparts.

Wesley Ward did it again, taking down his biggest Royal Ascot prize yet as Undrafted won the Group 1 Diamond Jubilee Stakes on the closing-day card of the 2015 meeting.

The Diamond Jubilee was worth almost $473,000 but glory ran a close second to the money. Ward, who somewhat out of the blue brazenly began sending 2-year-olds to the Royal Ascot meeting in 2009, had won juvenile races of some consequence there, and No Nay Never had captured the Group 1 Prix Morny in France, but this was his first truly major win at the Royal Ascot meeting.

Ervedya and Muhaarar won Group 1 races for 3-year-olds at Royal Ascot on Friday, a day in which five American-trained runners failed to finish in the top three in their respective races.

Muhaarar, ridden by Dane O’Neill for trainer Charles Hills, won the $592,500 Commonwealth Cup for 3-year-olds at six furlongs in a 10-1 upset. Limato, a 9-2 shot, finished second, missing by 3 3/4 lengths. Hootenanny, the winner of the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf at Santa Anita last October, was 11th of 18 as the 9-4 favorite for American trainer Wesley Ward.

Trip to Paris, who had to be supplemented into the race, upset the Group 1 Gold Cup on Thursday at Royal Ascot, but it was jockey Ryan Moore who stole the show.

Moore rode Kingfisher to a second-place finish in the Gold Cup but booted home the winner in three of the six races on the Thursday card. That gave him eight winners from the 18 races contested during the first three days of the meeting and equaled a Royal Ascot record – with two cards still left.

Royal Ascot came alive for American trainer Wesley Ward on Wednesday when Acapulco won the Group 2 Queen Mary Stakes for 2-year-old fillies, the trainer’s fifth career win at England’s most prestigious flat race meeting.

Ward has an even greater prize on his mind Friday when Hootenanny, the winner of the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf at Santa Anita last October, starts in the Group 1 Commonwealth Cup, a $588,937 sprint for 3-year-olds at six furlongs on turf.

The two favorites won the big one-mile races on the opening day of the Royal Ascot meeting Tuesday, Solow capturing the Group 1 Queen Anne Stakes and Gleneagles rolling home in the Group 1 St. James’s Palace Stakes later on the card.

It’s possible the pair could both show up next out in the Group 1 Sussex Stakes on July 29.

California Chrome, the 2014 Horse of the Year, was confined to his stall in Newmarket, England, on Tuesday while undergoing treatment for a foot abscess that will prevent him from starting in Wednesday’s Group 1 Prince of Wales’s Stakes at Royal Ascot.

Trainer Art Sherman said in a phone interview that the abscess in California Chrome’s right front foot had yet to be relieved, but X-rays taken on Tuesday showed no structural damage to the foot.