By MIKE DILLON
There is an interesting statistic around Sunline's defeat by El Mirada in Saturday's $A400,000 All Aged Stakes at Randwick.
The last time the pair met, in the Apollo Stakes on March 3, Sunline beat El Mirada by 14 lengths on similar rain-affected footing they struck Saturday.
Which means Sunline was 14 lengths off her best form this time.
Perhaps not surprising given the long trip to Dubai and a tremendously tough race running a close third to Jim And Tonic and Fairy King Prawn.
But this was not a case of Sunline's connections getting greedy - stretching the campaign by one race too many.
Racing the champion mare is the only way of determining where she is physically.
She is a such a dynamic physical specimen who, now with full maturity, holds her condition and colour so well, there are almost no outward signs of going over the top.
Whether it is training, racing or biting the hands that feed her, Sunline does it with feeling.
Almost any other horse will show signs of lethargy in training when a campaign is coming to an end.
But Sunline is too fierce a trackworker for that to be obvious.
Saturday's race showed she is tired, yet she put so much into her gallop in Sydney mid-week that the Randwick clocker was agog at the effort, especially when strapper and trackwork rider Claire Bird said there was plenty left in the tank.
Greg Childs knew he was in trouble when he topped the Randwick rise in the home straight on Saturday.
"She'd travelled well to there, even after missing the start slightly and I'd been happy on the home bend," said Childs.
"But as soon as we topped the rise and I put an ask on her, she went flat straight away.
"She fought hard, but she raced tired."
Sunline has a remarkable record of eight from eight on rain-affected tracks, but ironically the heavy footing counted against her this time.
When a horse is on the way down, a testing track will slow them up even quicker.
We will never know whether she would have recorded group one win No10 had the track been firmer, but that scenario certainly would not have suited the winner and it is doubtful the second placegetter Final Fantasy would have got near Sunline if she had not got so tired in the ground.
"On an ordinary day you'd expect her to beat that lot by miles," said co-trainer Stephen McKee from Sydney yesterday.
"It was interesting that Adam, the next best horse in the field to Sunline, finished five or six lengths last.
"The only other time she's put in a run as flat as that was when she was beaten in the Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Randwick almost exactly two years ago and she'd worked really well going into that race too."
The best news is that Sunline, despite taking a fraction longer than usual to cool off, was not distressed after the race and was fine outside of being a little tired.
So as the massive money-earning Machine returns to New Zealand and a spelling paddock tomorrow night, how do you sum up her season?
Sensational is the only word.
As much as her Cox Plate victory was remarkable for its dominance, Sunline's third in the $US2 million Dubai Duty Free was the most significant performance.
Simply because it showed to the Northern Hemisphere doubting Thomases of Australasian form that she was up to the world's best.
That fact did not escape even the busiest in Dubai.
No more than 10 minutes after winning one of the biggest races of his career, Jim And Tonic's French trainer Francois Doumen said: "Sunline showed she was the best horse on the night."
If she comes back in the spring in her best form there is nothing in Australasia which can stop her achieving her record-equalling third straight Cox Plate victory.
Beyond that we can only hope she gets another chance to show her wares north of the equator.
Racing: Tired champ earns good rest at home
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