ASCOT, UK — Sometimes a sporting season can be defined by one fleeting image. If indeed Andrew Balding ends the year by clinching the trainers' championship he so richly deserves, one such moment among many memorable highlights was the sight of the longshot Mount Atlas barging his way through a gap that barely existed to claim the first Group 1 of British Champions Day.The Aidan O'Brien-trained Minnie Hauk may yet have scuppered the Balding clan's hopes but make no mistake that Mount Atlas's first Group 1 win was a huge achievement for the family, and one which has been more than half a century in the making, long before the mating plans that would result in his birth were even drawn up. They say it takes a village, and racing aficionados have long referred to the Baldings' Park House Stables simply as Kingsclere, the village in which the yard is based and which it dominates. In Mount Atlas, Britain's most successful stable of the season can have no finer representative. Sure, there has been the marvellous Juddmonte trio of Kalpana, Blue Bolt and Item to keep the stable on a rolling high this year, but Mount Atlas is very much a homemade triumph. His first five dams were all bred by Emma Balding or her late husband Ian, as was Mount Atlas's damsire Passing Glance, who was trained at Kingsclere, along with the sires of the next four dams – Dashing Blade, Selkirk, Mill Reef and Silly Season. And nothing really says Kingsclere quite like those famous colours once carried by Silly Season and Mill Reef, belonging originally to one of the stable's greatest patrons, the American owner-breeder Paul Mellon. A famed Anglophile, Mellon would doubtless have revelled in the fact that those silks played such a part on British Champions Day, borne by a horse whose bloodlines possess a fair strain of that old Rokeby influence. Mount Atlas's breeder, who doubles as the trainer's mother, was not at Ascot. At age 77 and in this year in which she lost her husband, Emma Balding has, as usual, just completed a weeks-long stint perusing thousands of yearlings as a crucial member of the selection team for next year's intake to the stable. Instead of racing on Saturday she was watching her granddaughter Flora play hockey while Flora's parents and brothers oversaw the Group 1 team at Ascot. As is so often the case with one of Emma Balding's Kingsclere Stud homebreds, Mount Atlas is by a wildly unfashionable stallion in Masar, but as is also so often the case, he has outperformed any value the so-called experts might have placed on him had he been entered for a yearling sale. They'd have turned their noses up at a Masar colt out of a Passing Glance mare, even though his dam Highland Pass is a half-sister to another Group 1-winning Kingsclere graduate, Elm Park – himself by yet another in the old globetrotter Phoenix Reach. But fashion is for those whose tastes change with the season. Emma Balding, one of the most admirable members of the dwindling cohort of British breeders, sticks instead to good old-fashioned principles of horsemanship, ably assisted in her endeavours by the new generation at the helm at Park House, Andrew and his wife Anna Lisa. Perhaps her son still has a hill to climb if he is to wrest the trainers' title from Aidan O'Brien, but a mountain was conquered on Saturday.The Boughey boys clean upIf Balding is looking over his shoulder to find the biggest threat from the younger generation of trainers on the up, he will likely have identified George Boughey as possessing the greatest champion potential. Boughey may not yet himself be king but he has been a kingmaker when it comes to jockeys this season.Only three years ago the precociously talented Billy Loughnane was crowned champion apprentice, barely a year after his first ride under rules for his father, trainer Mark Loughnane. On Saturday he became champion jockey for the first time at the age of 20, succeeding the five-time champion Oisin Murphy. From Billy the Kid to Big-Time Billy in four short years, with this year's greatest successes being provided by the Boughey-trained Bow Echo. Billy Loughnane, George Boughey and Jack Callan Also among the daily riders in the Boughey string is Jack Callan, 19, who on Saturday was crowned champion apprentice, while his brother Henry is this season's champion amateur rider. They are the two eldest sons of Group 1-winning jockey Neil Callan, and there are two younger boys, Ted and Will, waiting in the wings.Extra poignancy was lent to the proceedings by the apprentice champion's trophy being named in memory of the late Tommie Jakes, a great friend of the Callan brothers who died last October at the age of just 19.There was rightly much hoopla at Ascot before racing began to celebrate the achievements of these young men this season. What must also be acknowledged is that the incomparable Ryan Moore was inducted to the British Horseracing Hall of Fame, collecting his commemorative medallion with the minimum of fuss just 90 minutes before urging the revitalised Minnie Hauk to glory in the British Champions Fillies and Mares Stakes. Different strokes for different folks. Champions crowned; a champion awaitsWhile the trainers' championship will not be decided until the final day of 2026, the owners' championship has, like the jockeys' title, been incorporated into what was once known as the British Champion Series. It was awarded on Saturday for the 18th time to Godolphin. The trophy was dished out after the royal blue team had won back-to-back Group 1s in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes and the Champion Stakes with Talk Of New York and Ombudsman, the latter eventually bound to join Bow Echo and Notable Speech among the new intake of stallions for the Darley roster next year. His efforts will likely have cemented a second champion sire title for Night Of Thunder, thus enhancing a splendid day for the Godolphin team, which began with victory on the other side of the world in The Everest for homebred Tempted, who took the notable scalp of Ka Ying Rising, and ended with a hat-trick at Ascot following the closing Balmoral Handicap win of Fifth Column.What is also now beyond question is the identity of this season's champion sprinter: Almeraq. Shadwell's four-year-old son of Dark Angel landed his third Group 1 of the year for William Haggas in the British Champions Sprint, emulating his damsire Muhaarar, who won the same contest 11 years earlier. With the £275,000 G1 William Hill Futurity Trophy to come at Doncaster next Saturday, there is still an enthralling battle for top trainer honours to play out. Aidan O'Brien's entries before Monday's confirmations include 18 of the 32 two-year-olds engaged, while Andrew Balding has just two entries, but he will have plenty more runners in his home country in the final two months of the year. At this stage, every winner will count for a trainer who has already sent out 182 this year for a prize-money haul of £9,050,839, just £82,494 behind his great Irish rival. The post Balding Shines But Mother Knows Best appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.