THERE is a saying in horse racing that “if they finish in a heap, they can’t all be good.” Like many such axioms, there are quite a few exceptions, but last Sunday’s Derrinstown Stud Derby Trial at Leopardstown does not strike me as one of them.

Douglas MacArthur prevailed, but by just a head and a short-head from his stable companions Yucatan (who traded long odds-on in running) and Capri, with Insayshable less than two lengths behind in fourth. Even the most charitable of interpretations of the form has it several lengths off usual Derby-winning standard.

Time analysis makes it worse than that again, with the timefigure coming out at just 96 for all the first three. The early pace was less than taxing, but the closing stages did not really make up for it, with the race sectional from three furlongs out of 37.7s equivalent to a finishing speed of 103.1% (103.0% was median for all winners at course and distance in 2016).

There were some great winners of this race in the first decade of this century – such as Sinndar, Galileo, High Chaparral and Alamshar – but the roll call this decade is nowhere near as impressive. Douglas MacArthur, will have to do quite a bit better to buck that trend.

The open-aged Ard Glen Construction Amethyst Stakes managed to be run in an overall time slower than the maiden which preceded it (won by Pincheck with a timefigure of 86) and the Derrinstown Stud 1000 Guineas Trial for three-year-olds which followed it (Bean Feasa, mentioned elsewhere). Custom Cut gets a timefigure of just 68 and third-placed Cougar Mountain seemed the one most inconvenienced.

There was an even more tactical affair for the Prix Greffulhe at Saint-Cloud on Monday, with the five runners ambling along on soft ground until sprinting the final 400 metres in 22.57s for a finishing speed of 118.7%.

Recoletos ran an overall time equivalent to a timefigure in the 40s by my reckoning, looking suited to the test of speed, and placed horses Waldgeist and Akihiro might have prospects of reversing the form another day.