LEXINGTON, Ky.-“When you have the honor of getting to the top of the hill, next you have to stay there,” said her husband. “And let me tell you, the wind blows pretty hard up there.”Anyone could have told Cherie DeVaux as much, after the agonizing defeat of a horse so charismatic that even the GI Kentucky Derby winner could not be complacent in presuming himself the best sophomore colt in her barn. But the point is that David Ingordo was actually talking before the race; bare moments before, in fact, even as they were following Englishman (Maxfield) out of the parade ring as odds-on favorite for the GI Cygames Breeders' Cup Sprint.Well, winds seldom blow like the one that seemed to funnel a gale into the propulsion of his one credible rival, T O Elvis (Volatile), to swamp him in the final strides. These horses were running so fast that they seemed to slip the dimensions of time itself: it was one of those races that seem to reach its denouement in five seconds, only for everything suddenly to lapse into slow motion.DeVaux and Ingordo won't require the consolation of a dilettante bystander that Englishman will someday confirm himself every bit as phenomenal as they had candidly reckoned him to be. Few Thoroughbreds can ever have been foaled that could be fired into the teeth of such a frantic pace, from the widest draw; be sent clear soon after halfway; and still hold off a horse that had barely missed the Churchill track record in his previous visit from Japan. To say the least, Jose Ortiz made some pretty ambitious commitments on a horse dropping in distance. Remember, too, that this was only the sixth start of Englishman's life; and that he had missed a work with a foot issue a month ago.In short, he remains a rough diamond. Even as it was, he preserved a margin of four lengths on the rest. Equally theatrical in presence and performance, he will put this behind him with maturity next year.In the meantime, DeVaux now inhabits a world very different from the one in which Englishman and Golden Tempo (Curlin) won their solitary juvenile starts. As Ingordo intimated, in the moments before the race, horses put you on an arduous road; one where every ridge attained just reveals another one, sloping towards a new horizon. So which is harder: to get to the top, or to stay there? Ingordo gave a wry shrug, acknowledged that he had experienced both legs of the journey–and settled for observing that one was as challenging as the other.In this particular case, however, it might be argued that DeVaux has at least shed, once and for all, the additional burden she had shouldered until that moment of vivid catharsis as Golden Tempo came barreling down the stretch at Churchill in May. It was inevitable, given our sport's deplorable record in giving women an equal shot, that her ascent had hitherto been always placed tiresomely in that context. From that moment, however, she knew she need never again be asked that question: she was no longer a pioneer female trainer, but an elite trainer who happens to be female.The agent of that transformation, Golden Tempo, ran in tepid contrast to his barnmate in the GI Classic, detached in the rear until laboriously passing only one in the stretch. But between them these horses have already and irrevocably corrected perspectives. The rest of DeVaux's story shall remain one of character and talent, not gender; of a person whose feisty, independent outlook, and devotion to horses, would be as conspicuous in any man striving to unravel the endless mysteries of the Thoroughbred.Those, after all, have never been definitively figured out by anybody. The wild acceleration of T O Elvis himself, for instance, was deliberately honed through an interval of 182 days. Another bloodstock agent in the parade ring, John McCormack, contemplating a calculation beyond all local convention, remarked: “Nobody plays the long game better than the Japanese.”With 35 years' experience there, he has seen how patiently horsemen there have transfused bloodlines rejected elsewhere into something akin to the “hybrid vigor” that Bluegrass horsemen were long ago urged to seek. But he also noted that their forte has been round a second turn, with a limited sprint program–and it was a Bluegrass export, of course, who had now returned to exhibit the rather different genetic wares he will someday offer to the Japanese breed.And then there is the record-breaking Aidan O'Brien, reminding us that there is no manual for genius–notably in the previous day bringing Sun Goddess (Ire) (Sioux Nation) to a new peak in her ninth start since May, over distances from five furlongs to a mile. She has gone looking for trouble wherever she could find it. Including, of course, from colts.Few females, however, have been as unaccountable as one invoked, somewhat prophetically as things turned out, by Ingordo. “I've been around one of the best ever,” he cautioned as we left the paddock. “And she got beat on us.” But then Zenyatta was among those rare champions that actually gain in stature even in discovering themselves not to be invincible. Arguably the same might now be said of Englishman.Ingordo was only able to buy Zenyatta for $60,000 because he never loses sight of the demands awaiting these glossy horses at the sales. DeVaux having similarly been raised in a racetrack environment, those foundations will no more be weakened by days of exultation than by days like these. Even so, they do last an eternity. You have no privacy, scarcely any time for reflection. DeVaux was granted a few seconds with Englishman, rubbing his face adoringly, and a few seconds more with jockey before being obliged to find some words for the press: those she chose were as scrupulously sporting as they must have felt bland, relative to the intensity of the moment, duly consistent with the kind smile she somehow had conjured in patting Ortiz on the back. Then it was straight back to the paddock, to saddle one in the next; and to start hoping that Golden Tempo might yet save the day. More clients and friends to greet. But that's the game. DeVaux took off her jacket, put on her sunglasses. But we know that dynamic, passionate mind of hers will have been working feverishly: already moving forward, already vowing that Englishman would regroup from this battle, and win the war. If he is anything like his trainer, that is exactly what he will do.The post Englishman Will Bounce Back appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.