Silent Witness's honourable defeat in Saturday's Champions Mile might be the springboard to greater achievements, because it was the first time in 19 months that he's actually had to battle for anything. An interesting aside to the debate on the quality of Saturday's performance comes from two different groups of ratings men. The group which attributes ratings through the line method has him running some five pounds below his best. This way of thinking, legitimate as it is, measures performances by finding a line horse - in this case third-placed Ain't Here - who they reason to have run to his everyday figure. They then build the ratings picture of the race through the line horse. The problem is that this doesn't take into account important factors, like the time of the race. Some analysts, including the late Australian guru, Don Scott, figure time is only significant when you're in jail, but that's an unnecessarily simplistic view. Whenever and wherever horses race, the winner is the horse that gets from the start to the post in the shortest time. It's just a matter of being able to measure the value of that time, given variations of track and weather conditions from day to day, or even race to race. Bullish Luck - and Silent Witness, for that matter - ran the 1,600 metres on Saturday in 1:33.7, slicing 0.1 seconds from the group or premier record held by champion Electronic Unicorn. A world-class time, made all the more significant by the fact that the track was not playing fast. After mathematically factoring out the speed of the track on the day, the Champions Mile was 1.4 seconds faster than standard. Time is a mistress that does not lie; it's just that sometimes we don't understand precisely what she is saying. On my ratings, Silent Witness has gone to a new best, the equivalent of an international 125, compared to his former best of 123. And for the handicappers who prefer the line method, if they use fifth-placed Super Kid as the line horse instead of Ain't Here they'll get the same answer. So what of the future? As sad as it was to see his winning sequence come to an end, I believe this battle will be the making of Silent Witness. Not since Planet Ruler eyeballed him in October 2003, has Silent Witness seen anything close to defeat and on that occasion he fought back despite being below his peak and conceding a lot of weight to the runner-up. He's been relaxing in front almost every start since and, against the sprinters, was just too good. Suddenly, in the Champions Mile, he was up against a world top-50 racehorse at the top of his game who didn't have the energy-sapping task of cutting the headwind and who was able to unleash his power finish with Swiss-precision timing. Silent Witness was waiting for them instead of putting them away. He battled back, and reduced the margin to a short head, but his rally was a fraction late. Bullish Luck's lightning finish claimed him by stealth but Silent Witness will have learned, the battle will have made him tougher, and he'll be capable of going to an even higher level. There's been a lot of talk about Silent Witness representing the spirit of Hong Kong. More than ever, he did on Saturday.
