Keith Melrose looks beyond the market leader in the Commonwealth Cup

If you want proof that racing does not do much of a job at celebrating its successes, you would not have to look much further than the Commonwealth Cup. Like all the best ideas, the greatest unanswered question is why no one thought of it years earlier.

From each of its first five runnings, either the winner or runner-up in the Commonwealth Cup has gone on to win an open-age, open-sex Group 1. And that is in sprints, usually the least predictable division and one in which the champions tend to stick around. The organisers of any three-year-old Group 1, Classics included, look on enviously at such a strong record.

When it was originally conceived, the Commonwealth Cup was supposed to take the non-stayers out of the Guineas and St James's Palace/Coronation Stakes. That has not worked out this year as three of the first seven in the betting were tried in a Classic on their first run of the season.