So Helissio, the European champion, was beaten, but it was not by one of the main contenders, rather an old fighter coming off the ropes with one last hopeful swing - Swain, the five-year-old so often found short of punching power in the past.
The boxing analogy is apt, for Saturday's King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Diamond Stakes at Ascot was not a classical race with panache and speed; in rain-ruined ground it was about determination and stamina.
To see some of the best racehorses in the world slogging through the slowest final quarter mile in the history of this race was not a pretty sight. There was no flowing motion, no finely-executed final thrust. But there was courage aplenty as Swain and Pilsudski drew clear to join battle.
Michael Kinane had been confident as he swung for home on the still-travelling Pilsudski and he might have been forgiven for thinking the race was his as he saw Helissio crack with two furlongs to run.
But at this stage, John Reid secured a fractional first-run on Swain whose dogged, one-paced style of galloping was ideally suited by the conditions. Swain grabbed a vital length advantage and held it. Reid had never sat on Swain until he was legged up in the paddock, but he had been told of the horse's sparkling weekend gallop and the last words of Tom Albertrani, assistant to the trainer Saeed bin Suroor, were: "Don't be surprised if he runs the race of his life."
When plans for the showdown were first being laid, it was apparently suggested that Swain be used in a sacrificial role to take on the front-running Helissio. For Sheikh Mohammed, it was a case of using another boxing phrase: "If the right don't get you, then the left one will." But Swain's gallop persuaded connections he should be run on his merits.
And, instead of Swain bursting himself to break Helissio, it was the three-year-old Kingfisher Mill who unwittingly did the job. After a fast first half-mile, Kingfisher Mill was done with and Helissio, so imperious in his fivelengths victory over Pilsudksi, with Swain fourth, in last year's Arc, took over, but this time there was no overdrive.
Helissio's game has been rumbled. He is no Mill Reef, we know that now, and unless he can become more adaptable and learn to come from behind, he will always find a pacemaker trying to run him ragged.
Singspiel, conqueror of Helissio in the Japan Cup, threatened briefly, but got stuck in the mud. He finished a respectable fourth, but the rest were well beaten, including Shantou, four lengths adrift in fifth, who had beaten Swain at Newmarket two weeks previously.
That shows how much a big horse like Swain can come on for a run and plans for him have now been changed. Instead of going for the Man O'War Stakes and the Turf Classic at Belmont in the States, he will now be trained for the Arc where, once again, he will meet Pilsudski. "Earlier in the week we were worried the ground would be too fast for him," said Lord Weinstock, owner of Pilsudski. "If Michael (Kinane) started praying for rain, I reckoned he just went over the top. That final shower did us."
One would not argue with that. The eternal fascination, some would say frustration of racing, is the topsy-turvy nature of form and Swain would be no certainty to confirm the placings in an Arc run on a faster surface.
