KEY POINTS:
We've got all summer to wonder about how good Hypnotize is. By the end of that his reputation will have grown even further, such was the dominance of his $100,000 Sharp Great Northern Steeplechase win on Saturday.
We've seen wider winning Great Northern margins - considerably wider. But
we've never seen a horse prick its ears near the end of what is unquestionably one of the world's most grueling horse races.
Hunterville, Royal Ways, Golden Flare all dominated along with others, but each pulled up knowing they'd been three times over the Ellerslie Hill.
Remarkably, Hypnotize looked as though he could have gone around another three times.
Perhaps that's due in part to the opportunity to condition a horse better since the Auckland Racing Club's masterstroke of relocating the Northerns from Queens Birthday Weekend to September, but that doesn't fully explain it - there were no others pricking their ears late in Saturday's feature.
Make no mistake, this was an extraordinary performance.
Hypnotize literally looked as though he had not had a race.
But, like all Great Northern Steeplechase winners, Hypnotize will suffer now from what the handicapper might do to him.
Once you win this race you have to carefully plan the rest of your racetrack life.
Owner Mark Connors and son Raymond, who trains Hypnotize, are the wrong ones to ask about the long-term future, despite having won the race previously with Our Jonty.
Mark Connors seems happier at home with his 450 cows and spent much of the immediate after-race excitement period trying in vain to avoid the media attention.
Son Raymond milks 400 cows and has always struggled a little, albeit with an engaging smile, with too much attention, even the day he rode Our Jonty to win.
On the strength of this win, perhaps the world's richest jumps race, the Nakayama Grand Jump, may not be out of the question in March.
There is little room in that race though for questionable jumping and Hypnotize, because of his relative inexperience - six steeplechases - is still learning.
To be fair to him he appeared to have learned a lot from his Pakuranga Hunt Cup victory two weeks ago and the first jump on top of the hill the last time on Saturday was the only serious blunder that could have cost him valuable ground.
There is always the Great Eastern in South Australia, this year won by another New Zealander in Blase, ridden by Hypnotize's jockey Isaac Lupton.
He has been the quiet achiever among jumps jockeys. Lupton has been riding fulltime - if you can call milking a herd and riding as fulltime - for only five or six years and rates up with the best of them.
He has complained much of the winter about how bad he has been going, but weigh up the Great Eastern, Wellington Steeplechase, Grand National and now the Great Northern and there are plenty traveling worse.
He is a real, down-on-the-farm 28-year-old who probably hasn't changed much since he wondered what the fuss was about when his parents pulled him out of school as a 5-year-old to celebrate the day his great uncle, the late Snow Lupton, won the 1983 Melbourne Cup with Kiwi.
The Great Northern Steeplechase is the race all jumps jockeys aspire to win, but there was no great emotion from Lupton on Saturday.
"The Grand National was the race I always wanted to win."
Jonathan Riddell gave well-fancied Stitched every possible chance and he rallied well for second without ever being a threat to the winner. The Storytella battled gamely into third ahead of the weakening Jump To It, with last year's winner Real Tonic just about down to a walk in fifth place.
Joanne Rathbone felt the extreme distance got to Jump To It in the closing stages.
"If the track had been better he'd have gone a lot further."
Brett Scott felt the opposite about Real Tonic.
"They went something like 24 seconds faster than when he won last year.
"He had more weight and perhaps it was a better class of horse this time, but a bog track would have helped him."
If jumps racing is in trouble it wasn't obvious on Saturday.
A capacity field went around in the Great Northern Hurdles and it was a novelty to see 15 line up in the minor steeplechase, even if four of them failed to get around.
* Opie Bosson opened up his Singapore riding contract with a win on Friday night for former New Zealand trainer Bruce Marsh.
But it wasn't all smiles - the Waikato jockey crashed off another ride when it stumbled coming out of the starting stalls.
* The TAB opens it's futures markets on the 2000 and 1000 Guineas this morning. Indications are that Diamond Deck will open as favourite for the 1000 Guineas.