When you reach the top, it is always nice to reward those who helped you get there, so the strictly neutral York officials can be forgiven for smiling at this result.
The transformation of the Aug. 23 City of York Stakes (G1) into Britain's first group 1 all-aged seven-furlong race was a project more than a decade in the making.
It relied not just on a huge injection of cash by the track but also on the support of trainers keen to run good horses in it, boosting the value of the form so the European Pattern Committee's resistance was gradually worn down and premier status was eventually achieved.
Step forward Andrew Balding, who won it three times when it was a mere listed race, starting with Vanderlin, who led in the last strides under Martin Dwyer in 2003.
He took it again in its first running as a group 2 contest in 2019, when Shine So Bright's defeat of multiple top-level winner Laurens did no harm to the race's year-on-year ratings average.
So it was only fitting that Balding should be the beneficiary when the race, first staged in 1978, was finally run at group 1 level for the first time on Saturday, and it came with a colt making his own progress through the ranks.
Never So Brave had looked merely a useful handicapper when moving to Kingsclere from the retiring Sir Michael Stoute, who had City of York history with the new trainer as his Confront dead-heated with Balding's Dream Eater here in 2009.
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Yet the four-year-old put handicapping behind him by defying a 138-pound impost in the Buckingham Palace Stakes at Royal Ascot before making a triumphant group 2 debut in the Summer Mile (G2) back on that course last month.
Another step up the ladder here produced another win as he came from off the pace at halfway to lead just over a furlong out and score by half a length under Oisin Murphy.
"I'm delighted," said Balding's wife Anna Lisa, relieved to have located the missing ingredient in the yard's 142-winner, £5 million-plus prize-money season. "We've had such a great year, but we hadn't had a group 1 win, so to get one is fantastic. Andrew has been a great supporter of the race—this is his fifth winner."
"He's kept on improving," Andrew Balding said. "To win over seven furlongs, then to win over a mile, then drop back to seven again shows he's pretty versatile.
"He's probably got an exciting campaign ahead. He did it pretty well today, but Oisin said that he felt that a mile is probably going to be the better spot for him.
"He's taken it all in his stride. He's a little bit quirky and to get him to come and win on a big day like this is just a great result for the team."
Rosallion, the group 1-winning miler who was rerouted here after a bruised foot ruled him out of the Prix Jacques le Marois (G1), could manage only fourth behind runner-up Lake Forest and third-place Maranoa Charlie.
Rosallion's trainer, Richard Hannon, refused to blame the drop in trip for the defeat, saying, "He didn't travel or pick up like he normally does. It was disappointing, absolutely, but he's not disgraced himself—far from that."
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