Sectional Debrief: Eclipse Stakes, Sandown 6 July

Al Kazeem's win in Saturday's Eclipse Stakes at Sandown had a sense of déjà vu about it, as he came with a sustained challenge to run down the leader, Mukhadram. That had been the case in the Prince of Wales's Stakes at Royal Ascot, where the sectionals suggested Al Kazeem could prove himself even more superior to his rival than the bare result.   

Al Kazeem duly extended his margin over Mukhadram from a neck to three and a quarter lengths, but it would have been a fair bit less than that had he not hampered his rival while asserting. In neither race did the result tell the whole story, in other words, and in both races sectionals help to shed light on why things unfolded as they did. 

It is difficult to establish optimum sectionals at Sandown, which is a track at which official sectionals have seldom been returned and where the camerawork often makes taking sectionals by-hand difficult. What is more, it seems clear from consideration of overall times and individual sectionals in unison that not one of the mile-and-a-quarter races at the track on Friday and Saturday was truly-run, and that includes the Eclipse. 

The races with the best times on the round course, relative to what might be expected given the calibre of the horses involved, were those won by Good Evans (14f: 96% fin spd for winner, but he probably went a bit faster than ideal) and Prince of Johanne (8f: 98.4%). An estimated optimum of 98% finishing speed for the Eclipse distance tallies with the effect of pace on overall times in other 10f races and seems a reasonable one. 

This being so, it can be seen that the Eclipse was a relative test of speed, with Al Kazeem deserving some extra credit, again, for finishing as he did. Similar comments apply to Declaration of War, though Mars can be added to Mukhadram as a horse who would have been closer but for being hampered. The big disappointment in view of how she had shaped at Royal Ascot was The Fugue. 

A closer look at the sectionals reveals that the Eclipse runners went particularly quickly from 4f out to 1f out but were slowing more than might be expected in the final furlong. Al Kazeem ran 10.94s, 11.13s and 11.99s before coming home in 13.36s. That was the second-slowest final furlong for a winner on Saturday, with only Caucus, who ran at two miles, posting slower (13.60s). 

By way of comparison, Mandour's win in a listed race run at a pedestrian pace on Friday (when the ground was not quite so fast as on Saturday) saw that horse take 2.99s longer to get to 4f out than did Al Kazeem, but Al Kazeem still ran the next quarter of a mile 0.65s quicker. 

This leads to an interesting possible interpretation of Al Kazeem as a racehorse, with his future tasks in mind. Admirable though he is, he has never run a really good overall time, and sectionals repeatedly show that quickening off less-than-exacting paces is something he does well. 

Even when he won the Jockey Club Stakes at Newmarket at 12f on soft going in 2012, the race finishing speed % of 107.1 indicated a slow pace earlier on, and Al Kazeem came from second-last and ran each of the sectionals from halfway quicker than any of his seven rivals. 

Al Kazeem is a high-class and notably consistent horse, capable of delivering a fine burst of speed, of that there is no doubt. But how he would cope with a strongly-run race at 12f, in which stamina more than speed counts, remains to be seen. And that could be very pertinent if the horse goes for the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp in October.  

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