Racing: Young stars just brain their class opposition

Attitude - you can't buy it and if you could you wouldn't be able to afford it.

Famed United States trainer Benjamin Allyn Jones once said: "The three most important elements in a horse are the brain, the heart and the lungs, in that order, and you can't see any of them."

Mi Jubilee and Xcellent proved Jones wasn't far off the money when they grabbed the group one spoils at Ellerslie on Saturday.

There is no question the pair are wonderfully athletic thoroughbreds, but their brains are their biggest asset.

Neither will die of a stress-related disease.

Group one preparation and racing has fried the brains of a huge percentage of 2-year-old fillies - when Mi Jubilee came back after destroying hotshots Darci Brahma and Wahid and, with rider David Walker still aboard, she nestled her head on the arm of trainer Steven Crutchley as photographs were taken and looked for all the world as if she had not had a race.

If she was human she'd have said: "Let's go and have a cup of tea and watch a movie."

She could not have cared less and that's something you can't buy in a horse.

Ask the Xcellent team about his brains and attitude and it's a mirror image of the Mi Jubilee camp.

Retired jockey Jim Collett works for the Mike and Paul Moroney stable as a consultant to ride most of the top horses on a rotation basis to provide another opinion. He says he's never seen a horse like Xcellent for attitude.

"You could tie him to the wall and walk away, he wouldn't care.

"He spells at my place and he cares only about himself. "

Mi Jubilee is identical - she loves humans and hates other horses.

"Put her near another horse and she wants to eat it," says her trainer.

It has been a superb training performance to get Xcellent to win a Derby on a two-race career then topple a group one weight-for-age field at the fourth start.

Mike Moroney is in awe of the horse.

"When I trained Great Command to win the Derby I had to really get into him. This horse is exactly the opposite - he's such a natural stayer."

Great horses overcome racing patterns and common sense. It was reasonable to expect St Reims to be too tough, both physically and mentally, but rider Michael Coleman and Jim Collett felt logic did not come even close - Xcellent's sheer ability would win over.

Collett: "When you ride him trackwork he's like a Concorde sitting on the end of the runway and he just keeps building and building, he's incredible."

For much of the day Coleman looked close to being physically sick from the effects of wasting hard to ride Xcellent at 52.5kg, but he brightened noticeably after the Darley Stakes victory.

"I knew at the 1000m that the race was ours. We started taking ground off St Reims and my bloke was cruising."

Remarkably, Coleman for all his success has yet to ride a winner in Sydney. It will be a magnificent result if he can turn that around in a race like the A$1.8 million AJC Derby, Xcellent's next start.

A broken arm almost certainly cost Coleman previous group one victory in Sydney. He was apprenticed to Jim Gibbs when the stable produced outstanding filly Tidal Light in the late 1980s and was regular rider at the start of her 3-year-old career.

Coleman broke the arm leading up to the Derby at Ellerslie, which saw Grant Cooksley successful on the filly. With a Sydney campaign in mind, Gibbs went for experience and engaged Lance O'Sullivan, the combination winning the Canterbury Guineas on debut across the Tasman.

Tidal Light set the Ellerslie 2000m track record of 1.59.89 when she won the 1987 equivalent of Saturday's Darley Stakes.

As excited as Coleman clearly was about Xcellent on Saturday he refused to declare him better than Tidal Light. That might change if the pair get over the line in the AJC Derby.

When Xcellent claimed St Reims so quickly in the home straight it looked likely that the favourite might weaken out of it, but he fought back bravely for second.

Lashed retired from the racetracks with a dogged finish into third ahead of Distinctly Secret and the luckless The Jewel.

The Jewel could not find racing room inside St Reims and had to ease back, pre-empting a judicial inquiry, which came to nothing.

"I'll take her home now," said trainer Hec Anderton.

"She's starting to feel the hard tracks and I don't want to break her down."

Big day out

* NZ Derby winner Xcellent lives up to Aussie bookmakers' expectations and takes the Darley Stakes.

* He and the day's other group one winner, Mi Jubilee, have one thing in common - attitude.

* Xcellent's jockey Michael Coleman had to waste hard to make the 52.5kg weight.

* Mi Jubilee's owner has already turned down $1.3 million for her.