In the rain-lashed swamp that was once racing's finest garden party, the no-shows were many and painful. Darjina ducked her engagement in the Falmouth Stakes, Johnny Murtagh's plane was grounded and the Newmarket crowd was a bedraggled fraction of July meeting standards.

Yet from the soggy ruins of a quintessentially English occasion there emerged a rare day of success for domestic stables in a year of overseas domination. Nahoodh won the Falmouth barely a month after being switched to Mark Johnston from Mick Channon, who enjoyed ample compensation through the Cherry Hinton Stakes victory of Please Sing.

These are among the most eloquent of British trainers, very different men yet both worth listening to. It was Channon, beaming under flat cap and raincoat after foiling a favourite trained by Aidan O'Brien, who captured the mood of the day and the theme of the season.

Please Sing, a failure at Royal Ascot, was a 14-1 shot against Ballydoyle's Heart Shaped but, whatever his varied sporting callings, Channon has never shirked a challenge. “He's been winning everything, so we'd got to be worried about him,” Channon said of O'Brien. “But if they let their standards slip, we've always got a chance of kicking their arse.

“When a stable is so dominant, it gives the rest of us something to shoot at. We can't just take the bat and ball home, we've got to get up every morning and go to work. We'll keep having a crack at them.”

Channon had done just that in France a fortnight ago, producing Youmzain to get the better of Soldier Of Fortune in a group one at St Cloud. Yesterday, while Youmzain remained on target for the King George later this month, the O'Brien colt was among the defectors at the forfeit stage. Ballydoyle, however, still have an odds-on favourite in Duke Of Marmalade.

Please Sing had dismayed her trainer in the Albany Stakes but looked transformed on ground that changed from good to soft during the card. Channon said: “She was one of our big Ascot hopes and we thought she'd win. For whatever reason, whether it was the occasion I don't know, she just didn't fire. But she's proved her worth today.”

On his way home to East Ilsley, Channon had good cause to reflect on his fickle occupation. In May, on the Rowley Mile, Nahoodh had been his latest hope for a first classic success but she finished only fifth in the 1,000 Guineas after a troubled passage.

By the time she disappointed in the Irish equivalent at the Curragh, Channon knew he was about to lose her, Jaber Abdullah having sold the filly to the Maktoum family. Johnston, reflecting on his windfall, said: “Mick told me he knew she was coming to me, so he knew more than I did.”

Johnston had not trained a group one winner for two years and, by his own standards, this had been a quiet season until his four winners last Saturday. He said: “Everyone said we were back in form after that but I wasn't 100 per cent happy. This makes a big difference though.”

Though Seachange and then Heaven Sent both travelled strongly into the closing stages, Nahoodh was produced with a decisive surge by Frankie Dettori, who escaped any disciplinary action for what was ruled accidental interference with the runner-up, Infallible.

Dettori was riding only his 26th winner of a season subdued by the inactivity of Godolphin. An hour later, though, his 27th arrived on one of the most expensive horses even his employers have acquired.

Meydan City cost Godolphin $11.7 million as a yearling, so even a relatively well-rewarded maiden like this constituted a low-key start to the payback. He won as if bound for greater heights, though, as did the Richard Hannon-trained juvenile, Soul City, in the preceding two-year-old contest.

The counterpoint to such big battalions came from Jonny Portman, who achieved his richest winner as a trainer when Spanish Bounty took the £100,000 toteswinger Handicap.