The swallows who nest yearly in my garage have agreed that ‘that’s enough baby-making for this year’, and started their 6,000-mile trip to the southern Sahara. Between burps, many thousands of wildebeeste are currently sniffing the Kenyan air and nudging each other south for new shoots on the grassy plains of the Serengeti. To me, Newmarket’s Autumn Double meetings, embracing the Cambridgeshire and the Cesarewitch, bring the same strong sense of seasonal change with the second of those Heritage handicaps over two miles and two furlongs offering a strong challenge to the Flat trainers from jumps specialists warming up their charges for the winter season.

We also look to Newmarket at this time to give us some idea of the leading contestants for the first of next year’s Classics in the shape of the 1,000 and 2,000 Guineas. The Group One Cheveley Park Stakes for fillies and Middle Park Stakes for colts, both sponsored by Juddmonte, attract the cream of the two-year-old generation for handy prizes of nearly £300,000, but it is highly unlikely that this year’s winners of the two races will be heading the markets for the Classics or even turning up at the Guineas meeting. Often the hope is that a Cheveley Park or Middle Park winner will be a horse with both the speed to win over six furlongs and the breeding to last at least the mile of the Guineas if not the mile-and-a-half of the Derby. But while Lezoo, who won the fillies contest for trainer Ralph Beckett, and Blackbeard, who took the Middle Park for Aidan O’Brien, are both rich talents, the races they won are sprints and sprinting is likely to remain their business.

Ralph Beckett, who has had a stellar season including an Irish Derby winner with Westover, was in the self-deprecating mode that is his default position. He declared: ‘She caught me out at home originally. I told the owners she would win a novice and that would be it. It just shows how wrong you can be.’ After four quick runs, he explained: ‘We had to pull up. I wasn’t sure that she was quite back on her game. She did just one piece of work on grass last week and that was it. She’s obviously very, very good. She was just flicking across the grass, she’s such a professional.’ But could she stay a mile? ‘I’ve never felt it. It’s very unlikely.’

What Ralph does resent is that Lezoo’s record now shows five runs, four wins and one second. He believes it should have been five victories, but the stewards let Mawj, who is the only filly to defeat her and was well beaten in third on Saturday, keep that previous race although she had carted Lezoo halfway across the course in winning. In contrast, Lezoo’s proud trainer pointed out, his Haskoy was demoted from second to fourth by the stewards in the St Leger, a decision he is appealing. ‘The one case was a hundred yards out and we didn’t get it. The other was two furlongs out and we got thrown out. There’s nothing wrong with the rulebook, it’s the consistency of the decision-making that is the problem.’

Aidan O’Brien had no doubts about Blackbeard’s future after he had come home two lengths clear of his stable companion The Antarctic to win the Middle Park. ‘He’s fast. He’s a five- or six-furlong horse.’ It will be the Commonwealth Cup rather than the Guineas for him. And how about his unruly antics before the start? ‘Oh, there’s no badness in him,’ said Blackbeard’s trainer. ‘At home you don’t be asking him to wait too long. He’s telling us: “I’m ready. Come on!” and we don’t disagree with him.’ Interestingly, Aidan said he was happy when Ryan Moore went to the front on Blackbeard: ‘Usually they don’t go fast enough to give him a lead and he has to make the running. It’s always best in these big races to get to the lead.’

The Cambridgeshire went to the 25-1 Mick Channon-trained Majestic, who only four months ago was an unraced four-year- old. Ridden by 5lb claimer Aidan Keeley, who was having his first-ever ride at Newmarket, he came out of the clouds at the finish. His cool young rider claimed to be incapable of framing the words to describe the experience, but he did. Former trainer and former fellow footballer Mick Quinn had been deputed by an isolating Channon to pick up the prize for him. Quinn confessed to having had a fiver each way at 40-1 – ‘8st 2lb and a claimer up; it had to make sense’ – and then dragged his fellow veteran David Elsworth up to the rostrum to share the receiving duties. How many times had he won the race, I asked ‘Elsie’. Once in 1998 with Lear Spear at 20-1 and once in 2004 with Spanish Don at 100-1 – and he can still describe both finishes. On the phone he told Channon: ‘You’re a lucky boy. It was about time you won it.’