Driven by Jean Philippe Dubois, French eight-year-old Royal Dream yesterday won the 92nd running of the international trotting race Gran Prix d’Amerique at the Vincennes Racetrack in Paris.

Eighteen horses lined up for the prestigious trotting race over a long distance of 2,700 metres and staged in front of 30,000 spectators.

Maharajah (Orjan Kihlstrom) went in front early on.

This Swedish trotter opened a half-length’s lead from Vanika du Ruel (Franck Anne), Raja Mirchi (Lutfi Kolgjini) and favourite Ready Cash (Franck Nivard).

But with 700m to go, Maharajah was overtaken by Ready Cash.

With the horses reaching the straight for home, Ready Cash was still going strong and the thousands of racing enthusiasts at Vincennes thought that this horse was going to live up to its billing and seal its third Gran Prix d’Amerique title in a row.

However, outsider Royal Dream was not finished yet as it powered first past the post in an impressive average time of 1.12” per kilometre.

In fact, Royal Dream equalled the record average time of the race, established in 2007 by Offshore Dream and repeated last year by Ready Cash that had to settle for the runner-up spot this time ahead of Main Wise As (Pierre Levesque) and Roxana de Barbray (Dominik Locqueneux).

Royal Dream is trained by Philippe Moulin and owned by the Victoria Dreams stables.