Which active trainer has been the most successful in the Cambridgeshire Handicap?

Run over nine furlongs on the Rowley Mile at Newmarket in late September, with a maximum field size of 35, the Cambridgeshire is one of the most competitive handicaps of the British Flat racing season. Together with another 'cavalry charge', the Cesarewitch, which is run over two and a quarter miles on the same course two weeks later, the Cambridgeshire comprises the historic 'Autumn Double' which, in the days of yesteryear, attracted floods of ante-post money.

The ante-post market may not be what it was, but the Cambridgeshire remains as fiercely competitive as ever and, as such, is a fiendishly difficult race to win. In the current training ranks, five-time champion trainer John Gosden has been the most successful in the Cambridgeshire, with a total of five winners, four of which were three-year-olds.

Gosden sent out his first Cambridgeshire winner, Halling, from Stanley House Stables in Newmarket in 1994. Sent off 8/1 co-favourite, the three-year-old was always prominent and stayed on strongly in the closing stages to win by 2½ lengths under Lanfranco 'Frankie' Dettori. With the benefit of hindsight, the Diesis colt must have been the proverbial 'good thing', off a handicap mark of 93, on that occasion; shortly afterwards he was transferred to the fledgling Godolphin and went on to win five Group 1 races, inclduing the Eclipse Stakes and Juddmonte International Stakes twice apiece.

After a 13-year hiatus, by which time he had moved to his current base, Clarehaven Stables, also in Newmarket, Gosden saddled his second Cambridgeshire winner, Pipedreamer, who justified favourtism in the 2007 renewal. He followed up with the four-year-old Tazeez in 2008 and, more recently, has added Wissahickon, in 2018, and Lord North, in 2019, to his winning tally.