Pat Jupp tries to make sense of the 150/1 Qirat winning the Qatar Sussex Stakes at Goodwood on Wednesday.
“You have just witnessed a felony! For jockey Gary Stevens has just stolen a $1m horse race! And we’ve got it on videotape!!”
This is how commentator Tom Durkin described the 1994 Breeders’ Cup Distaff win of One Dreamer, who caused a 471/10 shock under a fine front-running ride [watch the YouTube video below to hear the finest of calls].
Times may have changed in some ways since then (video tapes have long since been consigned to a small corner of your local charity shop), but jockeys are still occasionally guilty of trusting their judgement of positioning, as opposed to pace, and Wednesday’s Sussex Stakes is the latest high-profile example, when 150/1 shot Qirat became the longest priced winner of a Group 1 in Britain and Ireland.
Clearly, such calls about pace made in real time are not necessarily the easiest to judge, particularly in high-pressure situations like stallion-making Group 1 races, and Sean Levey did have Rosallion positioned slightly more forward than has become the norm for him - usually patiently ridden to make use of his turn of foot.
The time analysis confirms the visual impression, though, that those in the second wave of a disjointed race had too much ground to make up, a sectional uplift of 11lb for the runner-up in relation to the winner hammering home the point.
Had Levey sat two or three lengths closer to the front pair he might well have been able to catch Qirat, but it seems he was reluctant to take that risk for fear of being picked off late himself by one of those from behind him.
The rides of Ryan Moore and William Buick were also misjudged, for all the performances of their horses on the day suggest they wouldn’t have won whatever the tactics.
The irony is that Qirat’s presence in the line-up was presumably to prevent a messy, tactical race, but as with previous shock winners of Group 1 races who were in as pacemakers before him, Maroof and Summoner, both of whom slipped their fields when winning the QEII in 1994 and 2001 respectively, there is always going to be that element of risk when second and third strings are left to their own devices, as jockeys on the fancied runners watch each other.
In ratings terms it’s pretty much a case of as you were, with Qirat’s win essentially treated as a fluke (up 4lb to 114).
Rosallion looks tailormade for the now-Group 1 7f City of York Stakes at York’s Ebor Meeting, where connections will be hoping for a change of luck, whilst Field of Gold seemed patently unsuited by the camber and retains his pre-race rating of 132p.
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