PROFESSIONAL sport’s ability to provide upsets has been illustrated this English Premier League season by the success of Leicester City and the demise of some far more fashionable clubs, and a reminder of its implicit uncertainty was also served by the result of the QIPCO 2000 Guineas at Newmarket.

The victory of Galileo Gold – a smart two-year-old, though by no means a great one – was not too head-scratching on its own. But the abject failure of the first three in the betting, who filled the last three places at the finish, certainly was.

One of that trio was the Aidan O’Brien-trained Air Force Blue, an exceptional juvenile who went off odds-on but managed to beat only the similarly disappointing Racing Post Trophy winner Marcel.

FLUKE

In such circumstances, it may be natural to assume that the race was a fluke and that the form amounts to little. But not so fast, for this year’s Guineas was run in a notably quick time, which can be only partly explained by the presence of a tailwind.

Galileo Gold’s 1 minute 35.91s is one of the faster Guineas in history, less than a second outside Mister Baileys’ 1994 record for the race, and that despite this year’s race being run on ground that was somewhere between good and good to soft.

For this, Galileo Gold gets a Timeform timefigure of 123, surpassing Air Force Blue’s 121 recorded in last year’s Dewhurst Stakes. Runner-up Massaat gets a classy 119 as a result.

Electronic sectional times, provided by TurfTrax, underline what a good test the race was, with all of the runners getting to three furlongs out in under a minute, when that seldom happens for even the leader in a race of this calibre. It was a strong gallop, and even Galileo Gold finished a bit slower than par as a consequence.

In terms of how this year’s 2000 Guineas panned out, the race it most resembled in recent times was the 2013 edition won by Dawn Approach, another strongly-run affair in which many of the also-rans wilted but the winner saw things out well.

It is tempting to think that any performer who races like this must stay further. But perhaps the most telling feature in both cases was the comfort with which the colts laid up with that early pace.

That is more likely to be the sign of a very smart miler than a middle-distance horse who “got away with it” at the shorter trip on account of sheer ability.

The doubts about Dawn Approach’s stamina proved well-founded, and it has since been confirmed that Galileo Gold will not go down the Derby route.