Yeats back with a bang

THREE-time Ascot Gold Cup hero Yeats gave Aidan O’Brien his 22nd Group One winner of the campaign in the Prix Royal Oak at Longchamp yesterday.

The seven-year-old disappointed on his previous two outings at the track but was always travelling well in behind his pacemaker Mikhail Fokine.

The son of Sadler’s Wells went to the front just before turning for home and galloped all the way to the line to repel the challenge of the Sir Michael Stoute-trained runner-up Allegretto.