THE Shape of Water grabbed plenty of the action at last Sunday’s Oscars ceremony, while the shape of water – often that of a snowflake or an ice crystal – has been a matter of no small significance in the racing world in the last week or two also.

The “Beast from the East” laid waste to the racing programme and may well have a delayed effect on the state of the surface at next week’s Cheltenham Festival, as the moisture locked up in snowdrifts thaws and threatens to render the ground quite a bit softer than usual.

What action there was, was mostly confined to the all-weather and to broadcasts from milder climes (which would have included the North Pole if they had built a racetrack there!). Fortunately, there was one performance on the all-weather that warmed the cockles and may have relevance to the sunnier months ahead. The William Haggas-trained Headway won the 32Red Spring Cup at Lingfield Park on Saturday in the style of a seriously good horse.

A length defeat of the useful if exposed Rufus King is not in itself something to get especially excited about, and I make the timefigure based on overall time no higher than 99. But Headway put in some remarkable closing sectionals which suggests that he will be winning in group company before long.

In coming from several lengths back on the home turn in a race which had not been run at an especially strong pace, Headway put in successive sectionals of 10.8s then 11.0s to win a shade cosily in the end.

By way of comparison, only two horses out of 2493 ran faster for the final two furlongs at 7f at Lingfield in the entire period covered by TurfTrax sectionals, and neither of them ran anything like as quickly overall.

Headway was placed in the Coventry Stakes at Royal Ascot and the Gimcrack Stakes at York last year, but most things about him suggest he will be better at seven furlongs or a mile than the sprint distances he ran over as a two-year-old.

The son of Havana Gold was quoted at between 20/1 and 33/1 for the 2000 Guineas on the back of this, and I have had a nibble at the latter price. He is reported likely to go for the European Free Handicap at Newmarket in mid-April next.