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Talking Points: Saturday - 13th of April 2024

An all-time performance from Pride Of Jenni takes the headlines this week.

Pride Of Jenni winning the Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Randwick in Australia.
Pride Of Jenni winning the Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Randwick in Australia. Picture: Steve Hart

One-two-nine. That (129) is the rating Pride Of Jenni has run to in a breathtaking win in Saturday's Group 1 Queen Elizabeth Stakes (2000m).

Breathtaking for the crowd, and for the horse and Declan Bates, but not so much for the rest of the participants, who wouldn't have been too short on breath as they walked along some 40 lengths off Pride Of Jenni.

In her All-Star Mile win her finishing speed ratio was 98.39%, meaning she, 'techincally' went a bit too fast. But by doing so, with the best chasers positioned where they were, it was an advantage.

In the Australian Cup, her finishing speed was 99.57%, even closer to perfect. It just so happened that the winner, Cascadian, was only half as far away as he was on Saturday.

On Saturday, Pride Of Jenni was stopping quicker than she has in her past two runs. Her finishing speed was 96.84%, but this was less about what horse and jockey did during the race, it was what they'd done prior.

By going out so hard all the time, they've bluffed everyone out. No one wants to be the first to 'lead the field up', as if that's a bad thing. It doesn't really matter. You're still exerting energy when you need to, does it really matter if another horse is doing it first?

If we look at Via Sistina's sectionals, the sheer lack of judgment from the other riders is clear.

While Declan Bates went, in very simple terms, 3.16% too fast, Via Sistina has gone 10.19% too slow after rattling home in slick late splits from a ridiculously hopeless position.

Even the horse who sat second, Mr Brightside, has gone way too slow, with a finishing speed of 108.04%.

All this said, she's still put in a huge performance and who knows what would've happened if this race was run more (for lack of a better term) normally. She doesn't do things normally, and that's good. It's hard (almost impossible) to say she's not the best horse in the country.

So good in fact, that Timeform now make her rated 129, up from 125 in her All-Star Mile win.

That's in the upper echelon of modern Australian mares, and horses for that matter.

Black Caviar at 136 just edges Winx at 134, and then, remarkably, Sunline, Makybe Diva and Pride Of Jenni all sit at 129.

Now before everyone (who hasn't already) gets up in arms about that- no one is saying Pride Of Jenni is Sunline. Ratings aren't perfect. They sit within a window where one number best describes the performance. This is one peak rating in the noisiest of races, meaning there is a lot of variance in that number.

What it should hopefully do, once the beaten participants stop whining and look at any sort of data, is stop it happening again. Fool me once…