THE flat action was fairly low-key in Ireland and outside Champions Day in Britain, but there was a Group 3 at Leopardstown in the Killavullan Stakes, a contest which has produced a classic winner (Footstepsinthesand) and classic-placed in the past but rather less recently.

It remains to be seen how good this year’s winner Stela Star proves to be, but her 105 sectional rating (boosted from a 92 on overall time) is about average. She got the run of things from the front but pulled out plenty when needed to hold off Iberia (105 previously but needs more of a test) and Katiba, who have both been credited with 101 in this race.

Slightly higher levels of form were achieved in listed races by Mount Everest (107) later on that Leopardstown card, and by Silk Forest (109) and Solage (106) at Naas the following day.

Mount Everest gets that rating boosted to 113 on the back of a very strong finish over a 10-furlong trip which already seems a bare minimum. The son of Galileo and Six Perfections is quite lightly raced and looks to have more to offer.

The Everest proved too tough for one of the O’Brien stable stars, Ten Sovereigns, who finished plum last in the very valuable race at Royal Randwick in Sydney at the weekend.

The best Australian sprinters are tough to beat, let alone on their own patch, but I am not having it that an on-form Ten Sovereigns would have been wasting his time here: we have enough of a handle on the respective populations to suggest he had place chances at least.

Other important foreign performances came at Caulfield in Melbourne, where the Japanese horse Mer De Glace came out on top in a tight finish to the Caulfield Cup Handicap (Mirage Dancer, Constantinople and Mustajeer among those close up) with a 121 performance.

Subway Dancer (118), the horse whose proximity to Cracksman in the 2018 Champion Stakes at Ascot called that form into question, came good at last with an authoritative victory in a Group 2 at Longchamp, while Donjah (120), who could get nowhere near Ghaiyyath at Baden-Baden a few weeks ago, was an easy winner of the Group 2 Gran Premio del Jockey Club in Italy.