THE victory of Sea of Class in last Saturday’s Darley Irish Oaks at the Curragh may not go down as the greatest piece of form ever shown in the classic, but there are good reasons for viewing the winner herself as high class.

On the one hand, the middle-distance classic fillies have not seemed a good bunch, and in beating the Oaks winner from Epsom, Forever Together, and the listed winner Mary Tudor by a neck and one and a half lengths, in a time which translates into a timefigure of 111 by my reckoning, Sea Of Class was not elevating herself greatly above them.