IT is a fair bet that the reader had not heard of the horse called Arrogate before last weekend: the writer certainly had not. The American-based three-year-old had won the last three of his four starts, but none of them in graded company and none of them away from the West Coast.

Arrogate was pitched against the big boys in the Grade 1 Travers Stakes at Saratoga, and was not even the better fancied of a Bob Baffert-trained pair, beingsent off at 10/1.