Judged on past form, this race won’t tell us much. O’Brien did win this race with Dylan Thomas in 2007, but he’s also had four beaten favourites in it since 2005, including Acropolis at 4/7 and Fame And Glory last year at 2/5.
On that evidence, whatever SNA does here, he’s highly likely to improve on it significantly in subsquent runs.
I think he retains ability. He was beaten less than 4 lengths in a race on the short side for him by 5 horses, 4 had already had a run and 3 of them turned out to be very very good milers.
RVW and Mastercraftsman were actual milers and didn’t fare any better in their guineas and that (for milers) was a much weaker race.