SPORT has always loved a showman. From the artistry of Ali to the brashness of Best, the true superstars have always performed with a flourish.

Skill is to be admired, but the ability to adorn it with a theatrical bent ensures long-lasting adoration.

The equine world is no different and today, as Royal Ascot comes to York, racegoers will be treated to a rare glimpse of genius.

Flawed genius admittedly, but the darker side of the split personality on display merely serves to enhance the star qualities that will illuminate this afternoon's Queen Anne Stakes.

And make no mistake about it, Rakti is a star. Not a head-down, grind home by half-a-length type of winner, but an A-list, Hollywood, name-in-lights celebrity. The kind that enthralls one minute and then appalls the next.

Take this season's Juddmonte Lockinge Stakes for starters. With jockey Philip Robinson giving the mercurial six-year-old his head, Rakti opened his 2005 account by annihilating his Group One opponents and smashing Newbury's one-mile track record by a second-and-a-half.

Bullying his opponents from the off, Rakti finished like a locomotive - a fitting metaphor given that, twice in the preceding 12 months, he had run like a runaway train.

Sent off a hot favourite in the Coral Eclipse, the Michael Jarvis trained stallion flounced his way through the preliminaries, dawdled in the stalls and trailed in a disappointing eighth behind Refuse To Bend.

Worse was to come in the Irish Champion Stakes when similarly quirky behaviour before the off preceded a run in which he all but pulled Robinson's arms off.

Jarvis has spent the last 37 years training racehorses - he is yet to meet one that has given him as much pleasure, or pain, as the inimitable Rakti.

"Lets just say there are certain parts of the (Newmarket) Heath where I wouldn't dream of taking him," laughed Jarvis, who can boast 11 winners at the Royal meeting, including Rakti in last year's Prince of Wales' Stakes.

"We've worked with him long enough to realise that certain things are a no-no.

"He's not mad as such. He doesn't really do it at home, unless you try to get him to walk across gallops and then he'll just bomb off. There have been times when he's not always been going at the pace I wanted him at!

"When he came to me, he wouldn't go into the stalls. It wasn't just that he didn't like them - there was absolutely no way of getting him in.

"We overcame that, but then he decided he wouldn't come out of them instead. So it was back to square one with a horse that didn't really want to play ball.

"I've spent hours and hours with him, but it's been worth it in the end."

The secret, it seems, is to play down the frivolous side of his personality and work on the confidence and turn of foot that has turned Rakti into a champion.

The horse has been dropped back to a mile - despite winning the Italian Derby over 12 furlongs as a three-year-old - and today-s pre-race preliminaries will be kept to an absolute minimum.

Rakti will be boxed to the stalls - a policy that helped Motivator win the Dante at York earlier this year - and would not be running if the going was anything worse than good.

"There were reasons for him being just about out of control at Sandown," explained Jarvis. "That's something we've looked to work on.

"The going had come soft, which he really dislikes, and all the preliminaries just proved too much for him.

"It was a long walk from the paddock to the track and he got worse and worse with every yard. He plays up to the attention and his head had gone by the time he got to the start.

"He missed the break and couldn't get back into the race after that.

"It was an anxious time for us because we knew we had to work with him to get things right.

"Thankfully, this year, he's training much more calmly. I've learned a lot about him and that's helped us bring out the best in him."

Anything approaching that best will be good enough to earn Rakti his second Group One success of the year.

"Philip Robinson has consistently told me Rakti is the best horse he's ever sat on," added Jarvis. "I would think he's the best horse I've ever trained."

The best, but also the most baffling and therein lies the paradox that continues to characterise all of the greats.