ONE international raid on Royal Ascot which ended in ignominious failure was A Shin Hikari’s attempt on the Prince of Wales’s Stakes on the Wednesday.

Whether it was the steady pace, the soft going, or the stiffish track – or, more probably, just one of those things – the Japanese superstar was in nothing like the form that had taken him to a wide-margin win in the Prix d’Ispahan at Chantilly three weeks earlier, fading into last of six behind a horse, My Dream Boat, which he had thrashed in France. That steady pace played to My Dream Boat’s strengths, in that he had shown excellent speed to win an even more slowly-run Gordon Richards Stakes at Sandown in April, and possibly not to runner-up Found’s. The timefigure comes out at just 105 and all the principals could run quicker than this in a truer contest.