If recent history is any sort of guide, a star will be born on the first day of Glorious Goodwood. Trying to work out quite who that star will be is the hard bit.
Twelve months ago it was Harbinger, now the world's top-rated racehorse, back then just an authoritative winner of the Gordon Stakes.
One year earlier it was subsequent dual Breeders' Cup winner Conduit who took the Gordon, a race also bagged by the likes of Sixties Icon, Maraahel, Phoenix Reach and Millenary in recent seasons.
In short, it takes a smart performer to win the Group 3 trial, a race whose latest line-up could live up to that billing with its numbers including King Edward VII Stakes second Arctic Cosmos, runaway York winner Rebel Soldier and the Elite Racing Club's Dandino, unbeaten in four outings this season, most recently in Royal Ascot's King George V Handicap.
"I'm very confident he'll be there in the shake-up," said Dandino's jockey PaulMulrennan, whose mount is as short as 10-1 for the Ladbrokes St Leger.
"Ryan Moore rode the horse we beat at Ascot and he asked me the other day how was Dandino. I told him he was great and asked Ryan what he thought of our chance at Goodwood."
"Ryan said that we have a real good chance, and if Ryan Moore is asking about the horse, that's good enough for me."
Moore, who partners Rebel Soldier in the Gordon, teams up with last year's well-beaten favourite Main Aim in the Lennox Stakes, whose 2009 one-two, Finjaan and Balthazaar's Gift, do battle once again.
Finjaan, twice a winner in Group company at the Glorious Goodwood festival, has trainer Marcus Tregoning excited. He said: "You always need a degree of luck in this kind of race, but he's going there at the top of his game and we are optimistic. Goodwood really suits him as he's a horse with so much pace."
Pace will also be required in the day's third Group race, the 5f Molecomb Stakes, in which Zebedee seeks to give Richard Hannon a second consecutive victory in the contest following the win of Monsieur Chevalier 12 months ago.
Hannon said: "Zebedee would have a big shout on early-season form. Richard Hughes is adamant we got it wrong in changing the tactics at Royal Ascot and that he would have been placed in the Norfolk had we dropped him in."
