St Mark’s Basilica may be world #1 now, but he’s still got something to prove

The magnificent cathedral of St Mark’s Basilica on the Piazza San Marco in Venice was built in stages. After 100 years of work, it would have looked awesome by the 11th century, but the doges were still not happy. They kept adding an ornament here and an embellishment there, lest some sentinel from elsewhere in the ancient world could claim they had one better.

The decision makers at Coolmore Stud – known throughout their own realm of influence as ‘The Lads’ – must surely follow suit with the equine St Mark’s Basilica.

Chief architect Aidan O’Brien has built up this horse’s edifice to an unparalleled position as world #1 by TRC Global Rankings, but if The Lads do not add to his mystique by the end of the season, someone else may build one better.

But a shock retirement for the dual French Classic winner is one of the options now being considered by the brains trust at Coolmore. While this would safeguard him for highly valuable stud duties, it surely isn’t too big a risk to let him gild his record for all time?

Following the colt’s expected victory in the G1 Irish Champion Stakes last Saturday, the son of Siyouni moved up one spot in the rankings to head 4-year-old Palace Pier for the top spot. Mathematically, there are several reasons why the computer just prefers him to the Gosden runner, even though the margin is slim.

That not much divides the quality of the two leaders of their generations is reflected in their respective encounters with Poetic Flare. The Jim Bolger-trained colt was a neck behind Palace Pier when second in the G1 Prix Jacques le Marois at Deauville, then threequarters back of St Mark’s Basilica when third at Leopardstown.

This is just one piece of evidence that contributes to the computer scoring St Mark’s Basilica on 2189pts and Palace Pier – the former world #1 – on 2160. Here are the peak scores and epoch dates of the other horses we have called TRC World Champions under the system used since Racing Post Ratings were replaced by TRC Computer Race Ratings to estimate race quality:

With five G1 wins to his name from seven outings in Group races, St Mark’s Basilica (2189pts) is the third-lowest rated word #1, behind Cirrus Des Aigles (2169pts) and Orfevre (2185pts). He has had much less opportunity than those two to maximise his career Index, however.

Where could St Mark’s Basilica be sent? The G1 Qipco Champion Stakes on British Champions’ Day is the obvious port of call over a mile and a quarter, or else connections may be forced into a change in trip for either the G1 Queen Eliabeth II Stakes (down to a mile) or the G1 Qatar Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe over a mile and a half.

If he runs again, the TRC computer will again assess his range of performance ratings, which will have been revised by that performance. For now, partly to explain why he has leapfrogged Palace Pier at the top, let’s take a snapshot of the two sets of the figures we published for each horse this week:

TRC Computer Race Ratings ranked by merit for world #1 St Mark’s Basilica. Click to enlarge image

TRC Computer Race Ratings ranked by merit for world #2 Palace Pier. Click to enlarge image

The comparison between St Mark’s Basilica’s CV and Palace Pier’s is the kind of fascinating exercise to which some readers find themselves provoked. The former has the two highest performance figures of 130 and 129, so we can say his peak is higher, but the latter has a deeper CV evinced by his sixth-best rating of 123 being clearly better.

What the computer does for all horses, and you do too each time you make a bet, is to learn from experience which type of portfolio does better. In this case, the computer thinks that the answer is St Mark’s Basilica, but if the parameters that it had learned from trying to find winners were slightly different, it might be the John Gosden-trained colt who still headed the list.

Our rankings are probabilistic rather than deterministic. In other words, the computer understands that ranking horses is not like solving a crossword puzzle where exactly one solution fits the clues. Instead, it evaluates the expected competitive strength of the horse next time out as an Index which translated to a probability of one horse beating another.

If only St Mark’s Basilica did stay in training and met Palace Pier in the QE2 …