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British trainer landed Belmont feature on Saturday.

County Durham native Jack Sisterson is still pinching himself having won the historic Man o'War Stakes with Channel Cat last weekend.

Sisterson, who went to America on a football scholarship only to end up working for Todd Pletcher, is one of the rising stars of the training ranks in the States.

Channel Cat , a former Pletcher inmate, was ridden to glory by John Velazquez, with the Calumet Farm-owned six-year-old holding on by a nose from the fast-finishing favourite Gufo to claim a first Grade One win.

"It's humbling to win races like that. I'm from Durham and it was just a dream to come to America and have runners in races like that," said Sisterson.

"We were taking on the best of the best, there was an Irish Derby winner (Sovereign) in there, but in any graded race you expect to come up against quality opposition.

"He went there extremely well, he'd come out of his last race when he was second in the Elkhorn at Keeneland great. We gave him an easy breeze two weeks after that and if horses could talk, he told us then he was ready to run again.

"There are numbers you can get in America, there's a tool that takes a lot of things into consideration to come up with a single digit number for each horse in the race and those numbers were trending in the right direction and were predicting his next two races could be career-bests.

"I must give a lot of credit to the staff because it's all very time consuming, even on a night-watch because I want to know how he's resting. I would have loved all 50 of the staff in the winning picture with us because those guys do all the hard work."

Not surprisingly Sisterson is eyeing up some big targets, but a trip to the UK is unlikely.

"You could see how much he wanted to win. There's a lot of people against horse racing, but if you watched Channel Cat and the will he showed to want to do that, you'd be lying if you said he didn't want to be doing it. It shows how much he wanted to win by sticking his neck out," said Sisterson.

"If we were ambitious we'd take him to the Prince of Wales's and the King George, but that might not happen as it's a bit selfish!

"There's the Manhattan on Belmont day. That was the first time he'd been shipped to Belmont from Kentucky as before he used to be based at Belmont with Todd, so that's one worry eliminated.

"It would be three weeks, so I just want to make sure he's well because he could have a long 2021 if I manage him right.

"If I skipped the Manhattan, we'd probably go to the United Nations at Monmouth and after that the options are the Sword Dancer at Saratoga or possibly the Arlington Million. His end of summer goal would be the $1million Calumet Cup, for obvious reasons, that would be a great day out for the Farm.

"It was great recognition for the Farm as they own the stallion and the mare and they deserve more credit than me."

Sisterson had hoped to run another Grade One winner in his barn, True Timber, in the Pegasus World Cup but he met with a setback in the days before it.

"He hasn't left my barn, he's being checked next week when hopefully we get the thumbs up," he said.

"It wasn't anything serious, but he's getting older and we just want to do what is right by him. We haven't any particular comeback race in mind, but at the end of the year we'll be looking at the Cigar Mile.

"It's nice to win a race like the Man o'War so early in the season, it takes a little pressure off and is great for all the staff who dream of things like that. Every time I try to dream the alarm clock goes off!"