IT’S one of the extra little elements to the flat season when we have a big race winner, to look at his breeding, what sire he is by, and think of the next generation.

However, it’s a pleasure that seems to becoming rarer. It’s just a little disappointing to look and see that a brave winner of one of the top Group 1 races is a gelding.

Yes, of course they have their pleasures also – coming back over a few years, often giving some of the owners and trainers that could not be guaranteed to find or afford a Group 1 colt, a chance of a big success on the flat.

Helvic Dream’s success in the Tattersalls Gold Cup was welcomed by all, giving Noel Meade a deserved big win on the level. But, fine horse though he be, he’ll not be reproducing himself with a stud career. This was followed by another popular success in the four-runner Group 3 Coral Brigadier Gerard Stakes at Sandown on Thursday when the eight-year-old Euchen Glen won for Jim Goldie.

He beat two other geldings and one colt to become the oldest ever winner of the Coral Brigadier Gerard Stakes.

In France tomorrow we have the Group 1 Prix d’Ispahan where the field is headed by two six-year-old geldings in Skalleti and The Revenant.

Both featured prominently on British Champions day last year, The Revenant winning the QEII and Skalleti finishing second to another gelding in Adeyebb in the Champions Stakes. The three-year-old sprinter division has Creative Force, Logo Hunter and Rohaan. Among the older horses, Mishriff and Palace Pier hold forth for the furtherment of the breed as quality performers. We may have enough middle to longer distances of Galileo’s offspring filling stud places, both on the flat and as jumping stallions. We can accept that the geldings are there to test each crop over a few years but it seems strange that we have so many of them at the top level in recent seasons. Is there no place at stud for a decent middle distance performer?