Fantastic time ahead

"It was a non-work," argues The Bloodhorse's Steve Haskin. "If that had been an American horse, they wouldn't have bothered timing it. He never came out of a high gallop."

Fantastic Light's reputation had travelled before him - giant-killer of mighty Galileo and, alongside stablemate Sakhee, Europe's best older horse. Clock- watchers expected so much more if he was going to figure on his dirt debut. Yesterday, they got it.

Frankie Dettori took over as exercise rider and the pair produced a five-furlong time of '59 and change'. That's the phrase used when you can't remember the fraction.

Here it serves to convey a difference of opinion: Godolphin's trainer, Saeed bin Suroor, timed it 59.6 whereas Belmont's official clockers had 59.8.

No hairs were split: this work was on the money and suddenly Fantastic Light is a contender once more.

"It was one of the best work-outs I've seen at Belmont," said Haskin. "He grabbed hold of the bit and flew round the turn.

"His extension was beautiful. When I walked alongside back to his barn, he wasn't even blowing."

The clock never lies but - as Haskin rightly contends - when it comes to work, fast isn't always good and slow doesn't necessarily mean stay home.

"You can't take a fast work back," he says. Many a European challenger knows to their cost exactly what he means.

When French trainer Andre Fabre sent Arinthod to contest the 1993 Belmont Stakes, a scorching "58 and one" - that's 58.2 to us, decimalising that fifth fraction - meant players couldn't wait to get on. But, like Lochsong's 0.33 for three furlongs prior to the 1994 Breeders' Cup Sprint, he spent his race in the rehearsal.

Conversely, when a little-known colt called Canonero II pitched up from Venezuela for the 1971 Kentucky-Derby, his training times were laughed out of town. Yet not only did he win, but with effortless ease.

Preparing next at Pimlico, the clock told a sorrier tale of a halfmile in 0.52 and his Derby was filed under fluke. His subsequent Preakness victory broke the track record.

More recently, Irish handler Aidan O'Brien held his nerve with doubters at his heels when audaciously prepping last year's eventual Breeders' Cup Classic second, Giant's Causeway, with literally only a stroll around the track 24 hours beforehand. His gutsy colt's narrow defeat was training performance of the meet.

The moral is stick to your guns. Europe's best Breeders' Cup performers haven't changed their act in training.

Americans, of course, have a snappy phrase for it, derived from the philosophy of Californian handler D Wayne Lukas's raids throughout this big country.

'D Wayne off the plane' would be known in the UK as a form of bounce theory - that a horse racing just two or three days after flying to a new country maintains its form, but leave it any longer or race a second time later on and regression awaits.

In States-speak, 'acclimating' is bad.

Sheikh Mohammed will donate all prize money won by Godolphin in this Saturday's $13 million Breeders' Cup to the New York Heroes Fund via the National Thoroughbred Racing Association Charities.