By Sophie Brown BBC Sport Online

After a grim week in which horse racing's reputation was dragged through the mud, the sport received a much-needed PR boost in the shape of Royal Ascot.

Some excellent racing combined with good weather and a colourful spectacle to deflect the attention - albeit temporarily - from talk of race-fixing and drug-money laundering.

Just as the actual Jubilee celebrations at the beginning of the month were deemed an almost unqualified success, so did the extra Royal day in honour of the Queen's 50 years on the throne go down extremely well at Ascot.

The quality of racing was high and the introduction of a Group One sprint to the fifth and final day made it one to savour and Saturday saw a record crowd at the Berkshire course.

Royal Rebel was a surprise winner

Ascot chief executive Douglas Erskine-Crum has been keen to stress that the extra day is unique to this special year but it will be interesting to see whether in time this "one-off" will be repeated on a regular basis.

The destination of the major prizes followed the form of the season so far, with Aidan O'Brien dominating, Godolphin hanging in and Mark Johnston, who is at the vanguard of the pack chasing the big two stables, also collecting one of the five Group One races.

But after a double on the first day, O'Brien had just one more winner and Johnston went on to be the leading trainer at the meeting.

Rock of Gibraltar justified his odds-on price to take the St James' Palace Stakes but he was the only favourite to win any of the Group One contests.

Grandera was the star of a weakened Godolphin team, picking up the Prince of Wales' Stakes in style while Sophisticat was perhaps even more impressive in weaving his way to victory in the Coronation Stakes.

Ironically, the biggest surprise in the major events was Royal Rebel's repeat success in the Gold Cup.

Having not won any of his seven starts since landing last year's race, he was a 16-1 shot and something of an outsider.

But the enigmatic six-year-old put up a determined display and battled to another victory, becoming only the ninth horse in Gold Cup history to win more than once.

Eddery landmark

For the stewards, however, he had been forced to battle too hard by jockey Johnny Murtagh and the Irishman was controversially given a four-day whip ban, which will see him miss the Irish Derby next weekend.

But Murtagh gained some compensation by claiming the title of leading jockey - despite riding for only three out of the meeting's five days.

His weighing room colleague Pat Eddery provided another of the meeting's highlights with his victory in the Queen Mary Stakes putting him level with Lester Piggott as the second most successful jockey ever in Britain.

The 50-year-old moved ahead of Piggott onto 4,494 winners on Thursday at an evening meeting at Goodwood.

The Queen has been coming to Royal Ascot even longer than Eddery but there was to be no fairytale winner in her Jubilee year although hopes had been high when Green Line was sent off favourite for the Britannia Handicap.

But in that race, as in many throughout the week, it was the bookmakers who were the winners.

Norton scored a "dream" victory for his connections

Some heavily backed runners - notably O'Brien's odds-on chances Tomahawk and Marino Marini - slipped up to leave the bookies gleefully filling their satchels.

Before the meeting began, Mick Kinane was 1-2 to be the top jockey and you could get better odds on O'Brien landing six or more winners than you could on him having four or less.

That the Ballydoyle trainer has gone home with just three may be disappointing for the Irish perfectionist but it is good for racing as a whole that he did not dominate the week in Ferrari fashion.

First Royal Ascot successes for lesser known trainers such as William Muir, Jeremy Noseda and John Jenkins were a welcome sight.

The importance of the smaller trainers to the sport was perhaps best summed up by Terry Mills, who saddled 25-1 shot Norton to victory in the Royal Hunt Cup.

"As a small yard, you must take on the big boys," he said.

"If you don't dream, you're history."