Searching the Timeform Sectional Archive: Jumps Racing

Sectional analysis has tended to focus on Flat racing, on the whole, but its relevance to jumps racing is every bit as valid. In order for a horse’s average speed to be maximised, and for its overall time to be minimised, that horse needs to run efficiently: the Laws of Physics which govern this are essentially the same whatever the code.

In addition, there is a reason why the taking of sectionals is easier over jumps than on the Flat: it is nearly always a straightforward matter to be sure when a leader is crossing a given sectional as it will be clearing an obstacle at that juncture (easy to spot and record). For consistency, Timeform takes a sectional from the third-last obstacle, or where the third-last obstacle would have been.

Establishing the length of the sectional, and the margins back to non-leaders, can take more work, but obstacles themselves make sectionals – many of them for each race if you wish – easy to take.

Putting jumps sectionals into their proper context has been more of a challenge, at least until recently. Fortunately, British racing has upped its game so that overall race distances – and the effect of rail movements on them and on smaller sections of a race – can be trusted. Disappointingly, Irish racing has not followed suit.

The Timeform Sectional Archive also includes unique “upgrades”, or the degree to which a horse’s time performance should be marked-up on account of sectional inefficiency. This is expressed in pounds – to be directly comparable with ratings – and is derived from the formula detailed in “Sectional Timing: An Introduction by Timeform”.

Upgrades result from the difference between a horse’s finishing speed % (its speed in the closing stages compared to its average speed for the race overall) and the “par” finishing speed % for the course and distance in question. This has led some customers to ask whether those par finishing speed %s are publicly available.

They are not, in part because some of them are still being fine-tuned, and in part because those aforementioned distance amendments mean the pars need to be adjusted according to specific circumstances.

The preferred way of calculating sectional pars – also spelt out in the Timeform guide – is to identify well-run races and the finishing speed %s which give rise to them. But the subscriber to the Timeform Sectional Archive also has the option of coming up with estimates based on winners alone at the various tracks.

These reflect topographies, usual lengths of sectionals, and the way in which courses tend to be ridden, and their validity can be sense-checked by the reader through the following examples of extreme instances in British racing (Irish pars are left out here for the reasons given above):

Some of those named may surprise slightly, but it is a fair bet that Towcester and Exeter would have been high on most people’s lists of courses where finishes are slow compared to average race speeds. They occupy the two slowest spots over fences and two of the four slowest spots over hurdles.

No great surprise, either, that Lingfield is the leading course for fast finishes over hurdles, given that – according to Google Earth – it drops 32 feet from that 5.7f juncture to the line. All jumps races complete at least a circuit of a course and what goes up must also come down (even Towcester!)

Length of sectional also seems to account in part for why Hexham, with its stiff finish, is among the slower chase courses (98.7%, 4f sectional) but nearer the other end of the spectrum for hurdles (105.6%, 6.7f sectional).

That Hexham average hurdle sectional is the second-longest in use, by the way, with Ludlow and Killarney (both 2.4f) the shortest; Exeter (2.1f) is the shortest chase, while Clonmel (5.1f) is the longest in that sphere. Average distance from three out in Britain is approximately 3.3f over fences and 4.5f over hurdles. All of this, and much more besides, can be derived with a little effort from the Jumps Sectional Archive.

Those sectional upgrades can identify races which have been well-run and will probably represent solid form, as well as those which were not, which may not, and which tested stamina over speed or vice versa.

Some examples from this year’s Cheltenham Festival (at which every horse, in every race, was dealt with in full in the Archive) illustrate these points.

Annie Power’s Champion Hurdle win came in strikingly efficient style: none of the first five got an upgrade, and the winner’s finishing speed was 99.5% of her average race speed (par was 99.1%: a negligible difference). What you saw was what you got, to a large degree.

Sprinter Sacre’s Champion Chase was a particularly strongly-run contest, in which the winner recorded a 95.8% finishing speed and the pace-forcing runner-up, Un de Sceaux, was even slower at 94.0%. Sectional upgrades suggest there should have been little between the pair on the day.

The Triumph Hurdle, won by Ivanovich Gorbatov, saw most of the field finish close to the 99.8% par (with the third-last on the hurdles New Course being the longest sectional anywhere at 7.1f), but the first three all finished quite a bit quicker: the order was probably correct on the day, but the principals were all better than the result.

More recently, as a more topical example, sectionals suggest a clear pace bias in the maiden chase on the second day of the Galway Festival. Shock winner Talk The Lingo got the run of things up front and the next three home would have good prospects of equalling him or beating him under different circumstances.

These are the sorts of observations a good race-reader might be able to make without sectionals, but they would struggle to put precise figures on general impressions, and they might occasionally be put away by events.

The Timeform Sectional Archives flag up interesting horses and dubious scenarios in a purely objective way, and present the findings in an easy-to-understand format. They have quickly become an essential part of analysis for a new generation of punters, analysts and enthusiasts.