Horse racing / Timeform / 26 June 2012 / Leave a comment Bet Now

With Black Caviar in the field, there was arguably more international interest at Royal Ascot this year than ever before, and despite being below her best, the mare prevailed to seal one of the iconic occasions in racing history.

She came. She saw. She scrambled home.

It should not need Timeform to tell you that Black Caviar was below her best in recording win number 22 out of 22 starts by just a head at long odds on at Royal Ascot on Saturday. But, in the immediate aftermath of her nail-biting success in the Group 1 Diamond Jubilee Stakes, there were more than a few suggesting that this was about as good as she was.

What nonsense: people really should know better.

While Black Caviar's domestic competition has not been the strongest in her recent starts - a consequence of her apparent invincibility Down Under - she has beaten smart horses turning handsprings. And it was as recently as February, in the Lightning Stakes at Flemington, that she accounted for far more serious rivals in Hay List, Buffering and Foxwedge.

None of that trio has run outside Australia, but more than enough top Australian sprinters have done so over recent years to give a very good guide as to how such form stacks up.

The top Australian sprint form has probably been the best in the world of late, and it has manifestly been better than that in Britain over the same period.

Hay List would have strong claims to be the best sprinter in the world had it not been his misfortune to have been around at the same time as Black Caviar. Buffering and Foxwedge are not far behind him.

As it happens, an explanation for Black Caviar's performance was soon forthcoming, over and above her being prematurely eased, but for which she would have won less than impressively in any case. It is impossible to quantify the difference pulled muscles will have made on her performance, but it is surely reasonable to think that it might have been a lot.

The horse Black Caviar beat on Saturday, Moonlight Cloud, is no mug, but the others close behind them are not of usual Group 1 standard, with the exception of Society Rock, who might have won but for blowing the start. Timeform has Black Caviar running to 123, 13 lb below her career best and as "bad" a winning performance as she has posted in nearly two years.

It should come as less of a surprise that horses - good, as well as bad - sometimes underperform than that horses like Black Caviar and Frankel perform so well so often.

Of the 392 horses that ran at Royal Ascot 2012 with prior Timeform ratings, 180 of them (46%) ran 13 lb or more below their pre-race figures.

Only one of them - Black Caviar - did that while still being good enough to win.

Run a horse often enough and, no matter how good it is or how well it is trained, circumstances will conspire against it at some stage. It is folly to judge a horse on such evidence in isolation, especially when it has 21 previous wins to consider!

With Black Caviar, the circumstances included round-the-world travel, ground on the easy side of good and a track that was more testing than she (and her jockey) was used to.

Something similar happened to Frankel 12 months earlier, when an ill-judged ride saw him win the St James's Palace Stakes, hard ridden, by just three-quarters of a length when another cakewalk could have been expected.

Something similar may happen to him, or to Black Caviar (if she stays in training), or to both of them, in the future: that's racing, day in and day out!

What is not commonplace, in any shape or form, is the kind of interest and stomach-churning thrill that Black Caviar provoked by her visit to Britain. To be at Ascot on Saturday was to be at a horseracing occasion quite unlike any other.

Short of a Frankel-like procession, perhaps a gutsy and dramatic success while overcoming adversity was the greatest present Black Caviar could give her fans. And, contrary to what some rabble-rousers back home might have stated, many of those fans are British.

Horseracing is free of the flag-waving witnessed in other sports most of the time - it's one of the reasons I love it - but it is in competition with those other sports for public interest, and events like those witnessed at Royal Ascot this year do much good in promoting it to an international audience.

Black Caviar's connections deserve great credit from racing fans around the world, many of whom checked in at unusual hours to watch her drama unfold.

This is how it went down in a sports bar back in Black Caviar's homeland, some time after midnight: HERE.

Who said racing cannot connect with the masses?!