THERE is no escaping the fact that the week just gone was a low-grade one in the world of Irish and British horse racing, but that is not to say that it was uneventful, with the photo finish to the Ayr Gold Cup providing nearly as much tension as the concluding episode of the much-watched BBC drama “Bodyguard” the following day.

In the end, the result in the race was a dead-heat, with Son Of Rest and Baron Bolt both recording 115 timefigures in coming clear of their many rivals. The Flying Five Stakes Son Of Rest finished second in may well have been a soft Group 1, but this underlines that he is indeed some sort of group calibre on his day.

Group races themselves were somewhat thin on the ground, but Kessaar was an up-to-scratch winner of the Mill Reef Stakes at Newbury, coping well with the rain-softened conditions to outstay True Mason and post a 115 timefigure which earns him a place just inside the top 10 juveniles seen to date. True Mason ran to 104 but had a 109 previously and looks worth at least that.

There were Group 3 successes on the same card for Mr Lupton in the World Trophy (115 timefigure) and Young Rascal in the Legacy Cup (96 timefigure), the latter featured a close finish – also involving Mirage Dancer and Desert Encounter – at the end of a steadily-run affair.

Young Rascal’s defeat of the subsequent Derby runner-up Dee Ex Bee, Royal Ascot winner Hunting Horn and Irish St Leger winner Flag Of Honour in the Chester Vase back in May places him on 119 on time, and he has every chance of succeeding at an even higher level.

Young Rascal’s trainer, William Haggas, enjoyed another Group 3 success up at Ayr with Queen Of Bermuda, who needed only to repeat her previous form to take the Firth of Clyde Stakes readily, if in a time almost 2.0s slower than that Ayr Gold Cup a bit later on, and therefore worth a timefigure of just 91.

Broadway won the Group 3 Denny Cordell Lavarack Lanwades Stud Stakes at Gowran Park with a 104 timefigure, in a time much faster than the other two races at course and distance, albeit slow in terms of seconds per furlong compared to the five races officially run at only 320 yards shorter.

There were several listed races through the week, resulting in victories for: Baby Pink (103 timefigure at Galway); Wadilsafa (92, Sandown); Sheikha Reika (108, Yarmouth); Dolphin Vista (91, Ayr); Dave Dexter (83, Ayr); Intense Romance (73, Ayr); and Mankib (87, Newbury).

Baby Pink was backing up quickly following her runaway Listowel handicap win and took things to another level in accounting for a slightly-below-form Princess Yaiza.

Some of those other figures illustrate the shortfall between overall time and raw ability which often comes about as a result of inefficient pacing. For instance, it’s highly likely the Owen Burrows-trained Wadilsafa is better than that figure, and, indeed, he had posted a 113 when winning at York in July.

Closer inspection shows that the finish of his Sandown race was surprisingly slow: in other words, the entire field overdid things earlier in the race, which resulted in a near-14.0s final furlong.