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Timeform Recap the 2019 PB Lawrence Stakes won by Mystic Journey for trainer Adam Trinder.
Mystic Journey was the headline act at Caulfield on Saturday and she let no one down, powering over the top of Cliff's Edge and Hartnell in what was ultimately a fuss-free start to the spring campaign.
The margins over that pair were not grand, and her Timeform rating for the performance of 114 is a full 10lbs shy of her 124-rated peak from the autumn, but the result, as always, was a function of the shape of the race which only really developed from the 400m mark home.
Cliff's Edge had control of things from the front, and that scenario saw him able to run to his 117-rated best, with Mystic Journey less than a length to the good of him on the line. But shifting the focus to that last 400m shows Betty in a more dominant light. Her closing 400m split hints at a margin around three lengths being the result in a more truly run race, and in that scenario a rating closer to 118-120 would have been achieved.
We are starting to wade into a speculative soup here, and the closing splits of others in the race show that they too would have benefitted from a more truly run race, but there's certainly evidence that Mystic Journey was closer to her best than the bare result indicated and her 124 from the autumn is still within range as she heads into her spring campaign.
So Mystic Journey lived up to her billing, but she wasn't the (only) horse that sent the ratings geeks into raptures. That was the Godolphin three-year-old Bivouac who shot himself straight to the top of the three-year-old leaderboard with a 119-rated performance that could (maybe even should) see him rated well into the 120s by season's end.
A rating of 119 this early in the season, particularly one backed up with the sort of clock-based substance that makes ratings folk feel all warm and fuzzy and with such obvious upside, is fairly rare. In fact, looking at the last 10 years only eight three-year-olds have bettered that mark in the opening month of the season.
Amazingly four of those came in the same year, 2011, when Sepoy (rated 123 also winning the Vain Stakes), Smart Missile (123), Helmet (122) and Foxwedge (120) were part of a boom crop of fast-moving three-year-olds.
Menari (120), Astern (122), Exosphere (122) and Press Statement (120) round out that octet while Star Turn and Toorak Toff both posted 119-rated performances in August - Toorak Toff achieving the mark when winning a very early-season running of the Golden Rose.
The Golden Rose may be where Bivouac heads towards, and there is no reason to think that he can't/won't stretch his talent out to 1400m. But if not there are plenty of options open to one as fast as him.
Of those eight, six went on to win at Group One level. Menari and Smart Missile were the two that didn't make it, but both did post even bigger marks in September, while Star Turn bettered his 119 in October by blitzing the older horses in the Schillaci.
The Schillaci is run over the Caulfield 1100m, which we know Bivouac gets around rather promptly, and this year it carries a ticket to the Everest. It is a temperorary stop for Mountaineers. A bivouac, if you will...
