How two all-time greats faced off 5,000 miles apart to light up the year

Amid all the commotion that surrounded Baaeed's end-of-season targets, there was one very obvious conversation that gained hardly any traction at all. Perhaps it was just too far-fetched in this racing world of caution and managed expectations; maybe a crack at the Arc was the most we felt we ought to ask for, like children at Christmas making a tactical list for Santa.

What about it, though? It was unmentionable, obviously, but was Baaeed v Flightline completely out of the question? The undisputed two greatest horses in the whole wide world lining up against each other, at a mutually agreed venue over a suitable trip on a surface that would confer no obvious advantage on either?

And there, as you'll have no doubt spotted, we already have several cans of worms that made the clash between the best dirt horse in the world and the best turf horse in the world an impossibility. Unless we could have made it 'best of three', starting over a mile and a quarter on the alien dirt at Santa Anita, followed by a mile on good to firm at Goodwood, with the decider over nine furlongs on a synthetic surface made of chopped-up carpets and bits of old tyre somewhere universally hostile, like Moscow.