OK my attempt to pick holes in the form - before I do it, Ill say looking back it was a fantastic performance and seeing Timeform gave him 142, my mark looks rather stingy - I guess I dont rate Cape Blanco et al as high as the professionals.
Weight isnt an issue for me - its WFA so thats what older horses are supposed to carry against 3yos at this time of year, he'll give 8 pounds to these guys in Paris in October.
The time isnt as big a deal as you make it to be - the course in Ascot is only 5 or so years old and they are constantly breaking track records at every distance - there isnt that many top quality 12f races at Ascot (i can only think of 2, the King George and the Harwicke - Harbinger won both!). I havent got the chance to watch the race after the King George but the comments are that it was a steady early pace, unlike the feature.
The way I saw the race beforehand was I hated all the 3yos in the race - Workforce's derby was (excuse my hyperbole) a big farce of a race - everything just didnt seem right. They smashed the record time despite not going that quickly, I dont buy it at all, my guess is they did something with the railings which made the track shorter than usual.
Cape Blanco is an OK horse but not a superstar - yeah he won the Irish Derby but it was a far from vintage race - which seemed to prove to me that this crop of 3yos are well below average.
Youmzain got hammered in this race 2 years ago by Duke of Marmalade. He is a ridiculously quirky horse that obviously likes the set up he gets in the Arc.
Daryakana looks like countless other older fillies who were top class at 3 but have struggled for form at 4.
The disappointing thing about Sea The Stars was he never won by much - he just toyed with his opponents. I do agree that his Irish Champion Stakes win over FAG
was overrated. Harbinger is a much bigger stronger horse (who won his seasonal debut over 13f) and is the type of horse to ground others into submission and win by distances like we saw yesterday.
I do feel im being overly negative here when we saw a brilliant performance but Im yet to be convinced that he is a better racehorse than Shergar, Dancing Brave, Dubai Millennium and Sea The Stars..