SOMETIMES, the best-laid plans count for absolutely nothing at all.

Today’s Juddmonte International, the feature race on the opening day of York’s Ebor Festival, was billed as a head-to-head battle between two Classic champions. In the end, one of them didn’t turn up and the other was beaten by a 50-1 no-hoper. Such are the vagaries of racing.

Yesterday’s day-long deluge meant that dual Guineas winner Gleneagles was confirmed as a non-runner a couple of hours before the stalls opened, and it probably also accounted for the below-par performance of Derby winner Golden Horn, who never looked comfortable as he struggled to reproduce anything close to the performance that earned him his Classic success at Epsom.

Damn that infernal British weather. Chief executive and clerk of the course William Derby can do plenty of things to ensure York’s flagship contest retains its status as the ‘best race in the world’ – attracting blue-chip sponsors, investing in facilities and infrastructure, working assiduously to build up relationships with the world’s leading trainers – but he can’t turn off the rain.

So while this year’s Juddmonte had the potential to be a season-defining battle between champions from either side of the Irish Sea, in the end it turned out to be a damp squib in more ways than one. And it didn’t seem to matter that the sun was shining.

That is not to say that it will not be remembered for years to come though, and rarely, if ever, has a racecourse fell as silent as York was as the unfancied filly Arabian Queen repelled Golden Horn’s final frantic attempts to overhaul her. You couldn’t just hear a pin drop, you could hear the sound of thousands of 20-pound notes disappearing into bookmakers’ satchels, never to be seen again.

Prior to this afternoon, Arabian Queen had run in six races and won just one. Her last outing had seen her finish third in the Nassau Stakes at Goodwood – a decent level of performance undoubtedly, but hardly one that suggested she was about to strike a notable blow for her sex by becoming the first filly to triumph in the Juddmonte since Oh So Wonderful in 1998. Didn’t she know that tomorrow is supposed to be Ladies Day?

To add to the sense of the bizarre, her trainer, David Elsworth, was not even in the paddock to unsaddle his winner and receive his trophy because he was annoyed that he hadn’t been contacted in the build-up to the race to give his opinion on Arabian Queen’s chances and hadn’t been invited to a pre-race lunch arranged by the race’s sponsors Juddmonte. His toys were out of the pram, but given that he and his connections are now more than £500,000 richer, he can probably afford to buy some more.

In his absence, it was left to Arabian Queen’s owner, Jeff Smith, the former chairman of an aircraft interior company who previously enjoyed success with star sprinter Lochsong, to account for the shock.

“There’s no form line to compare between fillies and colts so we automatically assume that just because we’ve got a very good winner of the Guineas and St James’s Palace Stakes (Gleneagles) and the Derby (Golden Horn), the colts are automatically better,” he said. “But that doesn’t automatically follow.”

Nevertheless, you have to go back to the inaugural running of the Juddmonte in 1972, and the shock overturning of the previously-unbeaten Brigadier Gerard, to find the last time such a strongly-fancied favourite had failed to oblige in the race.

Sent off as a 4-9 favourite, Golden Horn was pulling Frankie Dettori’s arms off as he failed to settle in the opening two furlongs, and his early discomfort meant he was unable to latch on to his pacemaker Dick Doughtywylie.

That was always going to make him vulnerable, but while Time Test and The Grey Gatsby, who had been expected to give him his stiffest test, failed to get onto terms with him, Arabian Queen was always ranging ahead of his left-hand side.

Dettori briefly got his charge’s nose in front as he entered the final furlong, but while Arabian Queen rallied again in the final 100 yards, Golden Horn was pretty much running on empty.

“He burned up too much, too soon in the ground,” said his trainer, John Gosden. “There’s no doubt he’s much better on good ground. The filly outstayed them all, but it’s just a pity it rained.

“I think it was a combination of the freshness and the ground. He got his head in front, but he’d burned too much petrol too early in the race.

“He was always doing too much, and in hindsight, it might have been much better if he’d been right alongside the pacemaker from the word go. But as ever, hindsight is a wonderful thing.”