ONE of the reasons why Ten Sovereigns’ overall time and sectionals were so quick in absolute terms is because the surface at Newmarket was fast. Six track records fell on the Friday, though it must be acknowledged that there was a tailwind and that course records were reset prior to 2017 after repositioning of some of the starts.

The only exception to the track record frenzy was the steadily run two-year-old maiden won by Al Madhar (80 on bare time, 92 on sectionals) which was arguably the most interesting race over the entire three days with regards to the future!