EVENING meetings in Britain seldom have the quality that may be experienced in Ireland, but the late-May Sandown fixture is a notable exception.

Neither of the two Group 3 races – the Henry II Stakes won by Big Orange and the Brigadier Gerard Stakes won by Autocratic – was run in a good comparative time, but both had fairly quick finishes. The Brigadier Gerard was run in an overall time only 0.04 secs quicker than that recorded in the run-of-the-mill handicap which opened the card.