IT is rare for a mile and a half race to be won in the first furlong and to say that was the case in the Vermeille would be an exaggeration.

Yet when both John Gosden’s Oaks winners, Star Catcher and Anapurna, missed the break from stalls one and two, the attempts of their respective pilots, Frankie Dettori and Oisin Murphy, to save the situation met with very different results.