THE opener at Sandown on Friday provides a good example of one of the problems of time analysis. Goshen won in a canter by 34 lengths but the official time given (and reproduced elsewhere) was about 4.0s out, if taken from the runners passing the starter, which has been standard procedure in most circles for a long time now.

The official version has Goshen achieving little, the real-life version – or my interpretation of it – has him easily the quickest juvenile hurdler we have seen so far, on a timefigure of 140, only about 10 behind a typical Triumph Hurdle winner.