THAT you need not just good horses in good form, but well-run races also, to achieve good overall times was graphically illustrated over the two days of the Irish Derby Meeting at the Curragh.

There were plenty of in-form and talented horses on show, but lots of the races were falsely-run and resulted in disappointing timefigures.

The Dubai Duty Free Irish Derby was a case in point. We know that the first three home are capable of running fast times, as they did that, to greater or lesser degrees, when chasing home Golden Horn in the Derby at Epsom.

But that had been a strongly-run race (winner’s timefigure of 127) and the Irish Derby came to the boil much more steadily, with Jack Hobbs forging clear impressively but in an overall time worth only a 104 figure in this instance.

That is not to say that Jack Hobbs is anything other than a high-class performer - he had finished second in the best race on time this year, after all - but it may not be a good idea to assume that he has improved since Epsom. He did, however, demonstrate again that he has a sharp turn of foot, one that should continue to serve him well in races of this nature.

Modest though Jack Hobbs’ winning time was, it was still quite a bit better in relative terms than that of Diamondsandrubies (88 timefigure) in the Sea The Stars Pretty Polly Stakes, a race which the classic-standard fillies completed in a time slower than did the five-year-old mare Corker Hill off a mark of 74 later on the card.

While there was no suggestion from sectionals that Jack Hobbs was anything other than the best horse in the Irish Derby, the same cannot be said of Diamondsandrubies in the Pretty Polly.

The winner got the run of things from the front and had just enough in hand to hold off Legatissimo and Ribbons, with that pair, as well as sixth-placed Mutatis Mutandis, running faster from the turn than her.

Legatissimo remains better judged on the 119 timefigure she posted in winning the 1000 Guineas at Newmarket, while Ribbons does not have a good recent timefigure to her name but looks capable of attaining a similar level if she gets into a race which allows that to happen: she won an admittedly weak Group 1 at Deauville last August.