Sectional Debrief: Aintree Festival 2017

Much has changed about the Grand National at Aintree over the years – plenty of it for the better – but that you need a horse with courage, jumping ability and deep reserves of stamina to win the race has not. One For Arthur fitted the bill perfectly this year: it’s just a shame that some of us failed to spot that in advance!

Of those various factors, stamina was perhaps the least important relatively in the 2017 Randox Health-sponsored contest. That might seem an odd thing to write about a winner who came from well off the pace to power away late on, but sectionals show that this year’s Grand National was a somewhat odd race.

No attention should be paid to the claim made in some quarters that One For Arthur’s overall time of 9m 2.9s constitutes a course record. While the official distance of the race was corrected after the 2015 running – with this just the second race over the course and distance since – the start was not moved at the time. The race distance was wrong all along.

This year’s Grand National can be compared directly with all those since 2012, which was the final year before the start was moved forward (away from the stands) by nearly half a furlong. Many Clouds’ time of 8m 56.4s in 2015 was considerably faster.

As with that edition, this year’s race was run on ground that was probably “good”, rather than softer. And, as with that edition, the leaders went hard early, as can be seen by the times to First Becher’s of the winners in the last five years.

But that is where that particular similarity ended, for this year’s Grand National was markedly different on the second circuit from the first.

That strong pace slowed distinctly – as can be seen by that time at Second Becher’s – before a notably quick finish. The latter is reflected in that time from three out and a finishing speed % (speed from three out as a % of average race speed) well above the estimated par of 104%.

By way of comparison, Mr Frisk’s time from the same obstacle when smashing the old course record on exceptionally firm going in 1990 was 89.0s. I can find no other Grand National which finished in under 90.0s.

The variations in pace in this year’s Grand National are more starkly illustrated by the following graph, showing the number of lengths the leader was ahead of or behind par (as derived from winners’ sectionals in recent years).

It will have been an advantage to be off the pace on the first circuit, and all the first four finishers were to some degree or other. But that was not the case later on, and One For Arthur’s effort deserves upgrading as a consequence.

One For Arthur’s time of 44.5s for the 3.25f from three out to two out – at which stage he made up nearly a dozen lengths on the leader Blaklion – was remarkably fast and a full 1.0s (around five lengths) quicker than Mr Frisk had recorded for the section 27 years earlier. He was not in any way flattered: the opposite, in fact.

One For Arthur will not go down in history as one of the best Grand National winners – his provisional Timeform performance rating of 155 has been surpassed by seven Grand National winners previously this century – but, unlike many of his predecessors, he is young and there is every prospect that he will improve upon that figure.

Aintree is not all about the Grand National, of course, and there was much to appreciate in the rest of the three-day meeting, run on borderline good and good to soft going.

Perhaps the two most interesting races for the connoisseur were the Betway Bowl Chase, won by Tea For Two on Thursday, and the Betway Mildmay Novices’ Chase, won by Might Bite on Friday, both over an advertised 3m 0f 210y.

The fact that Might Bite won in a time 4.1s quicker than Tea For Two needs to be put into further context, for rail movements added 74 yards to the Mildmay but 93 yards to the Bowl. In addition, the ground was quicker – I made it in the region of 11 lb on the chase course – on the second day than the first.

After the various adjustments, including for weight carried, I make the two overall time performances very similar, with Tea For Two on 166 and Might Bite on 164. But the races unfolded in different ways.

The following is the raw one-on-one comparison between the leaders in the two races, unadjusted for distance and ground. The faster time recorded by Might Bite came entirely from a faster finish. Indeed, the novices were some way behind for the first half of the race.

One-on-one comparisons do not tell you whether one race was fast, the other was slow, or a bit of both, and so it is best to compare such things with established pars (which have been adjusted for circumstances).

This tells us that the Might Bite race was run pretty efficiently – with a finishing speed of 98.7% where 99.5% is par – but that the Tea For Two race was overly strongly-run, with a finishing speed of just 94.5%.

Cue Card helped to force the pace in the Bowl, and kept going when others of which that was true backed out of it. But Tea For Two was ridden more efficiently, and, in theory, that made the difference between a win by a neck and a defeat.

These things are all but impossible to judge while on horseback, or precisely without a stopwatch, so that observation is not intended as a criticism of the ride on Cue Card.

Perhaps the Cue Card of old could have sustained the strong gallop for longer. But the fact is that everything in the Bowl was finishing slowly compared to their overall speed, and the slower they were finishing in those relative terms the more their overall times were suffering.

If you want an example of why consideration of times – and of how times are arrived at and not just what those times are – is important then the story of Might Bite himself could be Exhibit A.

Remember that he would have run Kempton’s three miles significantly faster than Thistlecrack at Christmas had he not fallen when clear at the last, and that he was better sectionally than that horse for most of the way, too.

Some – including, oddly, professional time analysts – chose to ignore the evidence of the clock that day. The evidence since, and not just of the clock, is that Might Bite is a very good chaser indeed, capable of going a good gallop and sustaining it (providing he doesn’t go walkabout!)

Aintree did not uncover another Might Bite, but time analysis there can still aid your understanding of what went on and identify future winners.

Timeform’s unique Jumps Sectional Archive shows that the runners went quite slowly in the bumper won by Lalor on Friday (106.2% race finishing speed) and quite fast in the races won by Double W’s (97.8%) on Thursday, The Worlds End on Friday (98.7%), and by Fountains Windfall (95.9%), Finian’s Oscar (98.3%), Yanworth (98.4%) and Chesterfield (96.6%) on the Saturday.

Readers looking for sectional horses to add to their My Timeform tracker could do worse than consider Bun Doran (pace-forcing third to Double W’s), Katnap (fast-finishing second to Ultragold in the Topham following mistakes) and John Constable (ridden up with the strong pace before falling at the last while in second in Chesterfield’s race).