Racing: New champions for cause of equality

If every day was like Saturday's Champions Day at Newmarket, you would not have to sell horseracing. Like crowds outside a Moscow supermarket, they would be banging on the windows to get in.

If every Group One race provided the sort of result that allowed the 25-1 shot Tout Seul to win the Dewhurst Stakes then more small owners and syndicate teams would be attracted to the sport. And the bookmakers would grow even more corpulent.

You could tell in the demeanour of Tout Seul's connections that they had not arrived on the Rowley Mile with the idea that their winning percentage would pay for the day out.

They seemed to be there just to mix with the supposed greats, to collect an anecdote or two for their return home to Oxfordshire.

Tout Seul, though, also had in his corner the considerable asset of experience. There is always the budding potential of maiden winners carried into the Dewhurst, but invariably that bloom withers under the bright lights. Those such as Trade Fair and Desert Star will now have to start all over again.

Steve Carson too has benefited from experience. He started the season as an apprentice but now ends it as a Group One winner at his first attempt. The Ulsterman was helped, as others on Champions Day, by the effect of the draw which allowed him the rail position. That proved as helpful as a bannister to a blind man.

Fulke Johnson Houghton, Tout Seul's trainer, is getting dangerously close to stair-lift age and it was heartening to see him out there in the Newmarket blast and not encased in glass in a museum. It was seemingly a lifetime ago, and in a sense it is at 34 years, that young Fulke was leading in Ribofilio after the same race for the celebrated connections of Charles Engelhard and Lester Piggott. They don't make results like that any more.

It was a signal to how the season has panned out that Aidan O'Brien's Tomahawk should be the runner-up. Earlier this campaign Ballydoyle could have won with the stable vacuum cleaner, but then the bacteria came and things have never quite been the same in Co Tipperary.

It is a worry as the Irish team fly west, grasping the European pennant as they take on America's finest at Saturday's Breeders' Cup.

Rock Of Gibraltar, High Chaparral and Hawk Wing nevertheless sound a fairly terrifying crew, and that is before we even consider the merit of Hold That Tiger in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile. After the upset of Saturday, William Hill made the Tiger 7-1 favourite for next year's 2,000 Guineas, which is a price devised by turkeys and aimed at their brethren.

If Hold That Tiger runs well on the dirt in Chicago at the weekend he will immediately become a consideration for next spring's Kentucky Derby. If he does not, he will be knocked out in price anyway. So any odds at all are a joke.

There were shocking cards at Newmarket on Thursday and Friday as all the jewels were put in one weekend casket. That, however, did not seem to matter on Saturday, as quality race after quality race came through the strips and onto the carousel.

However, it must be recorded that allegedly the most prestigious offering, the Champion Stakes, was an impostor of the contest it has been previously. Storming Home picked a pocket or two as he led home in his Dickensian cheekpieces, the winner of a cheap Group One.

Never again can we entertain sneers about the relative merit of races run at this level in Germany and Italy. Storming Home stays in training but will probably never win another race.

And finally, we must discuss at length the result of the Cesarewitch. When the great race is run in 12 months' time we must not knuckle under to the thought that this represents an impossibility, a 36-runner handicap of random permutations.

It is, in fact, one of the easier races in the calendar to call, where there are only about three possible winners. Next time, do not bother looking at all the form, rather scrutinise the highest 10 drawn.

Last year, when Distant Prospect beat Palua, Give Notice and Establishment, he was drawn 32, with No 31 in third place and 30 in fourth. On Saturday, Miss Fara beat Direct Bearing – the horse from stall 36 beat the one drawn next to it. Dubai Seven Stars, the 66-1 third, was drawn 29. Distant Prospect, from stall No 1, probably ran a better race in defeat than he did in victory to finish fourth.

It obviously takes some doing to come across from a low draw, join the pack and make an effective contribution to the Cesarewitch. Bear that in mind for 12 months hence and the Christmas expense might not seem so grisly.

n Miss Fara, the 12-1 winner of the Cesarewitch (13.5-1 on the Tote) at Newmarket on Saturday, was the nap of Richard Edmondson.

2003 2,000 GUINEAS (William Hill): 7-1 Hold That Tiger, 10-1 Almushahar, 12-1 Oasis Dream, Tomahawk & Trade Fair, 14-1 Statue Of Liberty, 16-1 Desert Star, Refuse To Bend & Van Nistelrooy, 20-1 Muqbil & Tout Seul.