THERE was a debutant at Haydock on Friday in the Restricted Novice Stakes (19:25) that I think showed plenty of ability to battle into an unlikely looking third, writes Page Fuller.

Eternal Elixir (Archie Watson) ran incredibly green to start with, but caught the eye when staying on strongly up the straight.

He broke the slowest of the field taking 3.01 secs to reach 20mph which meant that by the end of the first furlong he was already 0.56 secs, three lengths, behind the winner King Casper.

Even in the second furlong, Hollie Doyle was struggling to get any momentum going, so at that point he was already 1.27 seconds (7.5 lengths) behind the winner. That is a lot of ground to make up for a debutant.

Once he had found his feet, Eternal Elixir managed to claw back a lot of his deficit and get to around half a second of King Casper, but unfortunately it was too late.

It may not have been the strongest race on paper, but on the back of that run you would imagine Eternal Elixir could easily land something of a similar level. His Finishing Speed Percentage of 109.02% also suggests a step up in trip wouldn’t do any harm either