IT is rare that a performance seems to tick every box. Passes the eye test? Check. Form looks solid? Check. Time compares well with other races? Check. Has no business winning based on profile? Double check.

Step forward last Saturday’s Goffs Million winner, One Look. Paddy Twomey has done some audacious stuff this year, not least heading to Galway with three juvenile debutantes and winning with two of them but landing such a valuable race with a first-time starter was something else.

One Look not only powered through the race but delivered on how she travelled, looking the winner from a long way out and pulling clear of three of the four highest rated runners in the field.

Those that made the frame were rated 101, 96 and 96 again, and it seems unlikely that the runner-up Cherry Blossom ran to her best (having her fourth start in less than two months and possibly flat), even rating her around 90 gets the winner close to 110.

Her time was also 0.69 seconds faster than an older 73-rated handicapper Dagoda earlier on the card, allowing that the overall time in that race suffered due to an overly strong early pace, while her closing sectional was bettered by only three runners on the card, all of them coming from the Joe McGrath so top-end sprint handicappers.

Stands out

But what stands out most of all was her profile: horses just don’t do this first time out. Part of that is because they are rarely asked to do with the stakes races providing the only real opportunity for a horse to break three figures on debut.

Considering Irish listed and group races for two-year-olds since 2004, only 11 horses (from 134 runners) have won first time out but that has gotten less common recently, just three of the coming since 2011.

In the cases of all those winners, the races had single figure fields which made life easier for inexperienced horses and the likes of Chrysanthemum (2010 Flame Of Tara) and Born To Sea (2011 Blenheim Stakes) were all able to run to a high level in such spots whereas One Look was doing it against 22 rivals.

Not all the first-time-out stakes winners progressed; of the 11 winners, only five ever won again, a few making it to the track sparingly afterwards, with 2007 Fillies’ Mile winner Listen the sole Group 1 winner.

Wide margin winner

One is also minded of another wide-margin sales race winner in Mums Tipple who took a York race by 11 lengths in August 2019 on his second start and then won just once in the next three years before making up into a good sprint handicapper of late.

There is a chance that this will have taken something out of One Look, but Twomey will be hoping that she will be more in line with a previous first-time-out winner of the old Fillies’ Million in 2007, Lush Lashes trained by Jim Bolger, a race that was worth €985,000 versus the €610,000 on Saturday. That one didn’t run again at two but won four times at three, including three Group 1s, and while Twomey and Bolger could hardly be further apart in approach, one senses that the outcomes might prove similar.

ONE thing that seems certain is that One Look was in the right part of the track in the Goffs Million, the race developing up the centre of the track as low draws struggled, just one of the runners drawn in single figures making the first nine.

That horse was the third My Mate Alfie (stall three) but at least as interesting is the 11th Guildenstern who was drawn six, his finishing position not telling the story of his race.

He had shaped well on debut behind Diego Velazquez over the same track and trip before being bought privately to join Donnacha O’Brien from the Joe Murphy yard.

Having been slowly away, he raced near the back of the field but made up his ground quickly around halfway to press the pace. Course Track sectionals have him fastest of all in both the fourth and fifth furlong.

That effort understandably told late on, especially as he was in the wrong part of the track, but he is surely better than this, a belief supported by his new connections entering him in the Irish 2000 Guineas recently.

DEEPONE winning the Beresford Stakes could almost be lost in the backwash of One Look’s performance, but it was a fine success in its own right and one that came off some excellent tactics from Twomey and Billy Lee.

I am far from sure that he was the best horse on the day, but I am convinced he received the best ride, one that was quite different from those used on his two previous runs.

Having won his first two starts, he was inclined to race keen up in grade the last twice, not really seeing his races out having settled behind horses, but the decision to go to the front here could not have worked out better.

Though again quite free initially, he settled well on the pace and got a break on the field after a couple of furlongs and maintained it to the line.

Team Ballydoyle, using jockeys that typically wouldn’t ride for them, seemed happy to sit in behind but could never get close to the winner, and the closing sectionals from Course Track which had the first five covering the last three furlongs in very similar times suggesting the result might have been different on a different day.

Deepone may well be a different horse from the front, but it seems unlikely that Ballydoyle will allow him as much rope the next time, especially as they tend to have multiple runners in the types of race he will be contesting, but to win this Group 2 was no mean feat.

IT is hard to know what to say about Sunday’s Irish Cesarewitch. The bad weather made it tough viewing from an analysis point of view while the camerawork didn’t help and many of the field seemed not to run their race.

Certainly, a prominent early position was a help with four of the first five, including the surprise winner Magellan Strait (the fifth three-figure priced winner in Ireland this year), with the exception being the runner-up Falcon Eight who had also been fifth in the race in 2022.

He did not have things go his way in the straight either, meeting trouble and needing to be switched for a run, but can be an inconsistent sort and is not sure to reproduce this in the near-term.

The fifth home My Mate Mozzie looked the winner when hitting the front two furlongs out travelling strongly but this is becoming a theme with him and might be one to swerve for win purposes at least.

Six of his last seven starts have come in premier handicaps, on the flat and over hurdles, and he has traded even-money or shorter in running in five of them and gotten beaten, with 1/2 the lowest price he hit here.