With luck, he may also have some better going.Ricketts confirmed Whitaker’s place on the Dublin team immediately after the King’s Cup. He will be joined by Robert Smith, Nick Skelton and William Funnell for this final outing before Ricketts selects the quartet for next month’s European Show Jumping Championships at Donaueschingen in Germany.Helena Weinberg won the Queen Elizabeth II Cup for women riders, after achieving the only double-clear round on the 11-year-old Albfuhrens Ramonus. Weinberg was runner-up twice during the years when she was riding for Britain before taking the German nationality of her husband.This was the first Queen’s Cup win for Germany as well as for Weinberg, who defeated Sweden’s Helena Persson, on Classic H. Britain’s Helen McNaught was third on Lexicon.ROYAL INTERNATIONAL HORSE SHOW (Hickstead, Sussex): Saturday: British Eventing Grand Prix: 1 Sir Dino (M Whitaker, GB) 212.74sec; 2 Drunken Disorderly (M Kyle, Irl) 217.13; 3 Berlington Bertie (F Whittington, GB) 223.27.

Refco Speed Grand Prix: 1 Lanz (P Eriksson, Swe) 98.86sec; 2 Give Me Remus (B Twomey, Irl) 100.30; 3 That’s Life (M Hecart, Fr) 4 faults, 105.56.Sunday: Longines King George V Gold Cup: 1 Carling King (K Babington, Irl) clear, 58.13sec; 2 Cortaflex Mondriaan (W Funnell, GB) 4 faults, 52.97; 3 Limbo V (A Davies, GB) 4 faults, 54.73. Hasseroder Queen Elizabeth II Cup: 1 Albfuhrens Ramonus (H Weinberg, Ger) clear, 63.68sec; 2 Classic H (H Persson, Swe) 4 faults; 59.19; 3 Lexicon (H McNaught, GB) 4 faults, 61.96.. So now we have another superhorse, ephemeral as he may be. Alamshar is now king of all he surveys, so much better than the previously disgraced three-year-old station he was representing in the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes, so much better than the older generation massed against him. Alamshar will next run in the Irish Champion Stakes over 10 furlongs of Leopardstown on 6 September. The Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe would be the natural progression after that, but the Aga Khan, his owner, already has Dalakhani pencilled in for that assignment and the routinely soft ground of October Longchamp would not suit Alamshar.The Aga is not renown for extending the careers of his good horses into a third racing season. So anything but victory at Leopardstown and Alamshar could be off.

There could be Santa Anita and the Breeders’ Cup Series in the autumn. Yet it is unlikely a British audience will ever see him again. We will just have to bathe in the excellence of the weekend.John Oxx, Alamshar’s trainer, did the same at the weekend, but, like the few cerebral men of his trade, the mind was racing ahead. Alamshar may have been on the go since there were snowmen on the ground, but he has become so good at his chosen profession that the show must now go on.

Until he drops.Oxx knows there will be a stinker thrown in some day, when the time arrives for the rubber band to break, but Saturday was not the moment to think of the terminus. The journey itself is proving quite thrilling.”A horse like this can never wind down,” Oxx said. “He’ll have a break from fast work, but he’ll canter every day It does them no good to get easy days. They’re athletes, they have to train, and there’s no time for a break That’s why you can’t go on forever with them. But I don’t think I’ve had a horse that’s put in a better performance than that today.”Alamshar has had his physical problems, but, on song, he is a formidable animal. One to compare with Sinndar, who won the Derby, the Irish version and the Arc during the millennium “They’re both consistent athletes,” Oxx said “They’re healthy and they’ve got a constitution. They’re genuine and then there’s the courage that separates those sort of horses from the rest.”Alamshar was no oil painting in the preliminaries on Saturday, an unimpressive little thing among the more muscled physiques of the likes of Nayef.