Coronation joy for veteran Brittain

Clive Brittain declared "I’m back where I belong" as he stood in the winner’s enclosure as an 80-year-old Royal Ascot winner yesterday.

His powerful three-year-old Rizeena (11-2) had just returned to her very best to beat a competitive Coronation Stakes field by three-quarters of a length and leave her puzzling performance in the Qipco 1000 Guineas well behind.

The earliest riser in Newmarket is as constantly upbeat as he is popular, and his belief in the filly who took last season’s Queen Mary and Moyglare had not wavered as he watched Ryan Moore pilot home the latest of more than a couple of dozen Group Ones in a training career which began in 1972.