Rags-to-riches sprinter Make A Challenge supplemented for Ascot Group 1

Godolphin castoff Make A Challenge will bid for a dream climax to a remarkable season at Ascot on Saturday after connections supplemented him for the Group 1 Qipco British Champions Sprint at a cost of £40,000.

The four-year-old, as short as 9-2, has experienced a
monumental rise this season, culminating in Sunday's Listed victory in the Waterford Testimonial Stakes at the Curragh.

That impressive display was a sixth win in his last eight starts, a run that has seen him improve 56lb on Racing Post Ratings this season. Such an ascent hardly looked likely in April after Make A Challenge refused to enter the stalls for the second successive start.

Trainer Denis Hogan said: "It's a big step up again and we're not taking it for granted at all, but he's earned a shot at it. He'll have no problem with heavy ground. Win, lose or draw, he owes us nothing."

He added: "It was a great performance on Sunday, he really loves those conditions. He's become so professional and [jockey] Joe Doyle did a lovely job settling him."

Make A Challenge was picked up by Hogan and Colm Sharkey for £6,500 in late 2017. The four-year-old landed back-to-back 7f handicaps at the Galway festival this summer, ran out an emphatic winner of the Joe McGrath Handicap at the Curragh last month and has accumulated just over €135,000 in career prize-money.

His progress this season, during which he has improved 45lb on official ratings from 66 to 111, came from an inauspicious start, as Hogan recalled.

"Around this time last year he made his debut at Dundalk and even in those early runs he had been hard to load and was slow away," he said.

"We brought him back from a break in the spring and he refused to load twice. Then he broke shocking slow at Limerick, but he showed me enough then to think he could be very good.

"From there, we really put the work into the stalls and the team in the yard got on the right side of him – and he hasn't looked back since. The ability was always there."

Denis Hogan is congratulated by jockey Joe Doyle's mother Claire after Make A Challenge struck for the first time at the Galway festivalCredit: Patrick McCann

He added: "He was on my shortlist at the sales if he went for £5,000 or less but I ended up going to £6,500 for him. I just thought his pedigree [by Invincible Spirit] was worth taking a chance on and he was only a two-year-old. I don't think he had been to a training yard so I knew he wasn't overly tried. We took him home and let him develop."

Make A Challenge's rise has also kick-started Doyle's return to riding in his native Ireland after riding 126 winners in Britain.

The rider is unbeaten in four starts aboard Hogan's stable star and the trainer said: "It's given Joe a revival and showed what a talent he is when getting the horses underneath him."

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