As rare as was Zarkava's pulsating triumph in the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe, the post-race admission of her brilliance is rarer still. Very few dissent from the belief that she is as good a filly as there has been since the Second World War.

That alone is reason to celebrate. Racehorses have not escaped the fad for compilations of “all-time greats”, a provocative exercise in controversy if ever there was one. Therein lies the beauty of Zarkava. To advance her cause is to deprive the chamber of debate. It triggers nothing more controversial than a phalanx of nodding heads.

Nevertheless, such a unified view has been reached through a myriad of interpretation. For some, it is in the bare bones of her two-length dismissal of Europe's finest. Others cite the striking visual impression of the nose-banded bay slicing through traffic like a Parisian taxi driver.

More still point to an unblemished race record acquired without resort to the whip. To this eye, however, the most revealing detail about Zarkava is the way she was handled by her jockey, Christophe Soumillon. The onset of a crisis is no time for the fainthearted, and for Zarkava, crisis was definitely shaping in the wall of horses blocking her path halfway down the Longchamp straight.

Rewind, if you will, to exactly the same moment 22 years earlier. It was approaching the two-furlong pole that Pat Eddery considered his options aboard Dancing Brave. He, too, had plenty of ground to make up yet, having had a brief look down the outside, he decided to bide his time and tuck back inside. A truly outrageous manoeuvre was rendered all the more so when he flew home on a wing.

To Eddery, what had seemed like an act of impertinence was nothing of the sort. It was the cold, calculating move of man utterly confident in his equine partner. Likewise Soumillon. Where most would have reacted to the enveloping crisis, prodding for room where none existed, Soumillon desisted. He had absolute confidence that Zarkava would respond when the moment beckoned.

Perhaps the best way to communicate the strength of Soumillon's nerve is to borrow from the advice Edward O'Grady once gave his jockey at Cheltenham. “You must ride with balls of steel,” he instructed. In truth, Soumillon had no choice. There could be no Eddery-like charge down the outer. His berth in stall 1 compelled him to hug the far rail and patiently await his destiny.

The way Soumillon handled that predicament, coupled with the certainty of his conviction, is the litmus of Zarkava's brilliance. It was the defining moment. Not for one nanosecond did he believe that she would let him down.

Any fabled tale is enhanced by romance, and plenty of it surrounds Zarkava. She is a great, great granddaughter of Petite Etoile, who passed to the Aga Khan on the death of his father in 1960. However, despite her racing prowess, Petite Etoile delivered but one live filly who would advance a dynasty that culminated in Zarkava's birth.

Much though we would love to see Zarkava race next season, the odds are against it. She has had an easy time of it, and unlike any colt, her value cannot diminish in defeat. Against that is the streak of wilfulness she has shown around the stalls of late. And that spells trouble.

As the trainer, Luca Cumani, once observed with his laconic Italian wit: “The two things that surprise me most in life are women and horses. A woman horse is what I find the hardest of all to fathom out.”