Visit Qatar Sussex Stakes (G1)
There is no point pretending that anything in the data could have pointed to the fact that Qirat was going to win the Sussex Stakes. By his own connections admission, he was there to act as a pacemaker for Field of Gold, but it didn’t pan out that way and we can at least attempt to use the data to explain why.
Here is the data for the winner. The early speed is perhaps not a surprise. He took 6.2s to reach 30 mph and ran the fastest opening furlong. That would seem to be obvious, especially given that the other pace setting option, Serengeti, missed the break. That slow start forced Wayne Lordan to make an early call and bringing his mount wide, he made his way to the front with the fastest 2nd, 3rd and 4th furlongs in the field. That forward move is one of the first pointers to explain this result as it created the impression that significant pace was being injected into the contest, especially when a gap appeared between the front pair and the rest of the field. However, those early fractions were slower than Notable Speech ran when winning this race 12-months ago in a race run with a finishing speed of 104%. As a result, the pace this year was nowhere near as strong as it may first have appeared to be and this allowed Serengeti and particularly Qirat, to conserve enough energy to take them into the closing stages of the race. As we can see from the speed data, Qirat had a top speed of 40.65 mph, which ranked 6th in the field. The next 5 horses to chase him home all had top speed figures of over 42 mph, but even allowing for the fact that the race developed into a sprint finish, the early ground made, at a relatively sedate gallop, proved to be the key. I will also add a small note to highlight that although a run-out speed of 38.65 mph ranked 2nd, it is important not to read too much into that and to note that most of the beaten jockeys had accepted their fate by that point and it was only the winner and runner-up that were truly driven through the line. At the top of the straight, Richard Kingscote takes a slight pull, in his words “to avoid being of no use at all to those behind me”, but this move conserved just enough energy to get his point home when it became clear that he had a winning chance. This is still likely to have been a career best from Qirat, but the stop/start nature of the early pace and the inability of those further back to react to it have definitely flattered the winner.
It would be easy to make a case for how unlucky the other horses were, but the data would suggest that the most unfortunate horse is Rosallion. As we can see from his data, he has finished his race best of all and made the most ground from the rear to chase down the winner in the latter stages. Sean Levey has been able to get his mount to run the fastest final 2-furlongs in the field and he has closed all the way to the line with the best run-out speed in the field at 39 mph. There will be several disappointed sets of connections in this race, but it is perhaps the connections of Rosallion who can feel most frustrated. He is the established horse that ran his race and on another day, he would most likely have won.