My high school economics teacher was particularly fond of wheeling out the following analogy when it came to innovation and herd mentality.
If someone goes to a football game and takes an orange box to stand on, that person has an advantage and gets a better view. But if everyone takes an orange box to stand on, then nobody has an edge.
(Now, we won't go into the suppositions involved, including the idea that there was no tiered area, no big screen or designed seating sections ...we're talking late 19th century here, remember. And it ignores the fact that whoever didn't have an orange box loses in every scenario. But we digress.)
The point is that everyone had their orange boxes out at Happy Valley last Wednesday night in the final race won by Easy Ahead and the result was a race that smelled of rotten oranges.
Few races in recent years have caused such talk among professional and just plain observant punters.
It was a glimpse back to the time when a handful of events each season were restricted to local jockeys and usually contested by those who got few real opportunities for the rest of the year.