Both Pat and Greville’s over confidence were big contributing factors to their mount’s loss but also Pat’s inability to use his whip in his right hand in the finish (due to Secreto being so close upsides and perhaps leaning in on EGS) also played a part together with the doubts over EGS’s stamina at 12F considering how brilliant he was in the 2000g. Greville had no such qualms about DB staying 12F unfortunately I beieve referring to him as ‘bombproof’.
I also think Secreto might have been underrated with his performance at Epsom (the big story obviously being EGS being beaten and Pat’s overconfident/arrogant ride) and we never really knew how good Secreto was as we never saw him again on the racecourse – he clearly improved for the step up to 12F (finishing 3rd behind Sadlers Wells in the Irish 2000g over probably too short a trip) and clearly he was able to go with EGS as their battle both pulled them away from the 3rd horse.
EGS went on to prove he did stay 12F winning the Irish Derby but I would maintain that 12F probably wasn’t his best/ideal trip, that being said I could well imagine that if the two had clashed again that Pat would have probably sat and sat in behind Secreto just waiting to pounce and use his superior speed rather than get dragged into a protracted battle, which I suspect he would probably have ended up again on the wrong side of the decision.
Re: Sea The Stars/Zarkava, I would agree in principle that overall she looked more visually impressive (the wow factor) but that is probably more to do with STS only ever doing the minimum that was required to win his races and as such you could argue because he never had that visual wow performance he was slightly underrated – that being said, his Arc win was remarkable in a totally different way as pulling that hard in the early stages of a G1 race and being trapped on the inside for much of the race should have blown any chance he had of winning but his ‘just do enough’ style of racing probably enabled him to still be able to win the race. Interestingly, the common denominator between the two Arc wins was the runner-up Youmzain, who was a decent horse (but nothing more) as he was beaten by them both and both ironically by the same distance of 2L but his biggest claim to fame was being a horse unfortunate to be runner up in three successive Arcs.
On to my own……..although, I am sure it is not classed as an unpopular opinion but an actually unprovable one but I was totally convinced that Frankel would have won the Derby and yes I know many will say Sir Henry knew the horse best but we also know that horses can make mugs out of anyone (including legendary trainers) and I do also believe that the totally unnecessary ride he was given in the 2000g (epically mind blowing as it was) wiped out any and all chance of him running at Epsom……….had he gone there and won though I very much doubt we would have seen him kept in training at 4, so swings and roundabouts.