If Damien Hardwick entered Friday night's blockbuster with a checklist of what his side needed to do to beat the unbackable premiership favourites, chances are he'd made a lot of green ticks by 10.30pm.
If you asked 100 people to name their favourite Prime, chances are you'd get a lot of Optimuses and Miss Jean Brodies before anyone mentioned Amazon.
There is a lot that can go wrong in sailing – equipment can fail, jealous competitors can work together to scupper a favourite's chances (over the years Ainslie has been a tough, uncompromising sailor and has made one or two enemies) or an umpire can make a dodgy decision.
The acting stand-off between Lancashire and Hawes is complicated by the shortlisting alongside them of Sheridan Smith, rapidly becoming heiress to Julie Walters as an Academy favourite; the chances of all three women are helped by the inexplicable absence of Maggie Gyllenhaal's Streepish virtousity of English accent acting in The Honourable Woman.
"We probably had a favourite's chance and he proved that today.
It was possibly the last moment at which the Royal runner had a favourite's chance for he was slowly away and Moore had to settle for a position further back than he wanted.
Cameroon, who conceded only one goal in qualifying and came into the tournament as one of the favourites, had chances earlier in the game but could not find a decent finish.
Nicholls, and Nicky Henderson for that matter, will surely get among the big prizes this spring and in the meantime there are some decent smaller pots to count towards final tallies, like today's Sky Bet Chase (better known as the Great Yorkshire Chase) at Doncaster, in which Nicholls' young and progressive Le Mercurey holds a favourite's chance.
To his credit, Johnson accepted his fate with greater equanimity than those protesting yesterday that an injustice had been perpetrated – the ones who claimed the American had been robbed of a major championship victory or, at the very least, a favourite's chance of winning the subsequent play-off.
The Queen's runner Dartmouth will go to post with a favourite's chance in the King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot on Saturday after Postponed, odds-on for the race on Wednesday morning, was ruled out of contention by a respiratory infection.
