To the eye, the Able Friend wow factor was back in the Champions Mile, even if the same quality was missing from the race itself.
Much has been made of Able Friend's final 400m sectional time but it was hardly surprising in such a slowly run race. Frankly, we think the whole race goes in the bin as a guide to the future other than to say the world champ looked his old self even if he performed to a higher level when not being himself in the Chairman's Trophy.
Able Friend didn't run below his best ratings, he ran an ocean from them - but racing is an adversarial contest, not a time trial, and he ran as fast as he needed to run to win the race. That's what he was there to do, the race was no more than a barrier trial in the way it was run, and had no more meaning in form terms. Luger virtually took no part and had he been scratched at the barrier instead of the 300m mark, Able Friend would have been at odds of 1-10 or shorter and expected to make it look as uneven a match as he ultimately did.
The slower a race is run, the less it means as far as defining the real difference between horses and this was very slowly run for high-grade horses on a track that was running as quick as it has been in recent weeks, and with a little tailwind to help with sectionals. Even average horses can run impressive sectional splits - Class Fiver Fantasticlife ran out of his skin with a 22.27 second split on Sunday - if they only have to run hard for a short distance.
So we actually thought the handicapper was a bit rich raising Real Specialist's rating by a point for his fourth - any mildly competent Class Three horse could have finished where he did given the same run. All he had to do was keep up with the other beaten runners with their foot to the floor for 400m. The fact of who he finished beside is really neither here nor there. If Usain Bolt takes 30 seconds to run 100m because that's all he needs to do to beat some guy off the street, the man off the street will finish close to him. It won't make him a faster runner because he finishes close to him.
We know Able Friend can do it, so we are not knocking him, it's just that his real talent wasn't required on Sunday. We certainly prefer the Able Friend we saw on international day, when a proper test was asked of him with a solid lead pace courtesy of Gold-Fun and his acceleration was just as good as it was on Sunday and the win just as soft. Now, that was something.
Accelerating - not just passing other horses but actually running and then running faster, there's a difference - is a much more difficult job off a strong tempo and led to a far more impressive performance.
That's the Able Friend who needs to turn up at Royal Ascot.
We are sort of presuming that he will go now but anyone who thinks the Queen Anne is automatically over should remember there are still a few tricks to play out before Dr Cornel Li Fook-kwan hoists the trophy.
One is the undulating Ascot racecourse, something that Able Friend has never encountered. No doubt he would take to it fine with some practice but it's the kind of thing that can play havoc with the action of a horse who has only ever been on flat, circular courses. Turning up to it fresh against quality opposition has been the downfall of many a boom galloper at the Royal meeting in the past. The Europeans might not have been to Royal Ascot but they will have more experience of that kind of track, in races or in training.
Then there's the travel itself. Joao Moreira might be flitting to and from Hong Kong to Sydney or Dubai or wherever but Able Friend's only air travel was from Australia to Sha Tin and he's never as much as climbed into a truck to go to Happy Valley in the two years since. He just walks across the road to work, to trial and to race and we have no idea how he will cope with getting in a van to the airport, on a plane for, what, 13 hours? Then a float to Newmarket.
So there's that, too. Having a great horse isn't the only part to going to a serious race in a foreign clime and winning (although it beats the heck out of taking just an OK horse).
Let's have all the best on one day and on one stage
Before we let the Champions Mile slip away, we just want to add another voice to the chorus calling for seeing it reunited with the Audemars Piguet QE II Cup.
In the years of the sponsored race, it was reasonable to separate them for the sake of the sponsor getting all the attention, but unsponsored it belongs with the QE II Cup, with the Sprint Cup as support too.
We don't have the horse population to stage carnivals of racing like they have in other jurisdictions - the week of Royal Ascot or the week after week of A-grade racing in the Australian spring and autumn carnivals.
Here, the next best on offer, after international day, is a (slightly) watered down version of December but staging top grade 1,200m, 1,600m and 2,000m races. It also makes for a better week in the lead-up - to be honest, last week was like pulling impacted wisdom teeth with only two trainers and basically two horses engaged in the Champions Mile, albeit this could have been considered special circumstances.
There are various considerations re the Champions Mile holding potential for participants from Sydney's The Championships if left where it is, with an extra week for recovery/quarantine, but programming around what might suit Australian trainers has been an exercise in futility even in Australia.
One day, one stage, all of the best together. Hong Kong has been doing that pretty well for a while.
