NORMALLY when a maiden winner clocks a faster time than a pattern winner you’ll find they went a slow early pace in the higher class contest and came home a lot faster.

This was not the case with Marsh Hawk (38) who set a strong pace when winning on her debut and still came home 0.67 of a second faster than they managed in the Group 3 Sweet Solera Stakes over the same distance and 1.27 seconds faster than Rene Mathis did in a good handicap at Newmarket last Saturday.

In fact Marsh Hawk ran faster than any other horse on the card and ran the last three furlongs faster too.

This was a proper Group 1 class performance by Marsh Hawk and good enough to equal the best rating I ever award a two-year-old filly two years out of three.

The impressive thing about the performance is that Marsh Hawk was keeping on strongly at the end of a strongly run seven furlongs on soft ground. This suggests she has every chance of getting the mile of the 1000 Guineas next year.

The clock shows that Marsh Hawk would have won the Sweet Solera Stakes by two lengths if she’d contested that race instead of the maiden. It’s hard to understand why the winner of that race is 25/1 for the 1000 Guineas while you can get 33/1 about Marsh Hawk.

The obvious targets for Marsh Hawk this season are the Fillies’ Mile or Marcel Boussac by way of the May Hill Stakes.

However, a better plan would be to supplement her for the Moyglare Stud Stakes on September 14th. That would enable her to run over the same distance she won so impressively over at Newmarket. It would give her a big chance of winning a Group 1. Before then I certainly wouldn’t mind having a bit of that 33/1. If she’s as good as I rate her, she could end up favourite for the 1000 Guineas.

Marsh Hawk is a bit below average size, so it’s possible she may run into traffic problems when tackling big fields of higher class rivals. That’s the only potential negative I see about her.