Sectional Timing Debrief: Festival Trials Day 2018

It seems I was tempting fate by writing the words “[time analysis over jumps] is at last perfectly feasible thanks to accurate measurements of race distances and rail movements” in my preview of Trials Day at Cheltenham on Saturday.

The distance over which the feature race – the Cotswold Chase – was run was not as advertised in advance (3m 1f 56y), nor as corrected to on the day (3m 2f 70y), but something else entirely.

A “typo” meant that the actual distance of 3m 1f 170y – confirmed since by Cheltenham’s Clerk of The Course – did not get conveyed. At the time of writing, the details are still incorrect on the Fixtures Update section of the BHA’s website, which is meant to be the official word on these matters.

To err is human, and British racing’s authorities seem intent on proving their humanity. There are ways of lessening the likelihood of such mistakes, including through measures suggested by me on behalf of the Horseracing Bettors Forum, but they have not been adopted.   

In the meantime, if you lumped on the Cotswold Chase winner Definitly Red ante post for the Cheltenham Gold Cup back at the course in March in the belief that he had run an exceptionally good time, you have reason to feel peeved. That may still prove to be a decent bet, but his time is rather less impressive when coming at a distance 120 yards shorter than widely reported!

Trials Day has a good record of producing winners at the Cheltenham Festival itself, having done so in each of the last five years with both winners and losers, including twice in the Triumph Hurdle (Peace And Co in 2015 and Defi du Seuil in 2017) and twice in the Stayers’ Hurdle (Cole Harden in 2015 and Thistlecrack in 2016). Definitly Red is far from the only candidate from Saturday’s racing for honours back at the course in March.

Analysis of overall and sectional times may help us to sort the wheat from the chaff or at least to understand better what went on. Here are the headline figures for all seven races.

It may come as something of a surprise that those finishing speeds – the speed at the end of the race expressed as a % of the speed for the race overall – are as high as they are given Cheltenham’s famously testing closing stages.

But three out over hurdles is nearly a mile from home on the New Course and at the same elevation as the finish. Three out over fences is just half a mile from the end and around 40 feet below it: as a result, chase finishing speed %s tend to be lower.

Those figures tell us that the majority of races were well run on ground that was between soft and heavy (and arguably more testing on the hurdles course than the chase one). The notable exception was the race won by Frodon, but that may be slightly misleading in that he ran fast late but his rivals much less so.

Interestingly, the Cotswold Chase was about four lengths slower up the run-in than the Timeform Novices’ Handicap Chase won by Mister Whitaker and over 10 lengths slower than that Handicap Chase won by Frodon.

Whatever distance the big race was run over, it turned into a real slog, and anyone inspired/stupid/misled enough to have backed Definitly Red for the Cheltenham Gold Cup should be hoping for plenty of rain and plenty of pace (and perhaps some helpful rail movements) on the day.

The one-on-one comparison between Mister Whitaker and Frodon is an interesting one. The two horses ran near-identical times, but Frodon was carrying 18 lb more, and his timefigure is likely to be a smart one.

Did one (Mister Whitaker) go too fast or the other (Frodon) too slow? There may have been a bit of both, but those headline figures suggest it was rather more the latter than the former. Frodon’s finishing effort was indeed power-packed, not just against his immediate rivals but against the clock.

This was a coming-of-age performance by Frodon, with a smart overall time and some very smart sectionals suggesting a reproduction will see him go close in the Ryanair Chase, for which he is a backable price.

The likeliest Cheltenham Festival winner on show on Saturday was Apple’s Shakira, who is favourite at around 3/1 for the Triumph Hurdle. Funnily enough, that is much the same price she was before her eight-length defeat of Look My Way, despite her putting up her most convincing effort yet. She had been too short previously, and may be too short still, but not by much.

A one-on-one comparison with the concluding Handicap Hurdle won by Remiluc needs to be viewed in the context of rain between the two races (though my estimate is that it slowed the surface by only about 2 lb per race). It does, however, illustrate that the juveniles did plenty of running early and that Apple’s Shakira herself also did a fair bit of running late.

What should also be factored in is that Remiluc and third-placed Our Merlin got an advantage of several lengths over their rivals in the Handicap as a result of an unsatisfactory start.

The pair maintained a significant lead for much of the way, despite going far from quickly, and it makes Remiluc’s ability to hold on despite strictly going too fast between three out and the last easier to explain.

Remiluc completed the run-in several lengths slower than Santini and Agrapart had done at longer overall distances earlier on the card but had been several lengths quicker between the last two and even more than that from three out to two out.

Those deteriorating ground conditions complicate matters, but it seems likely that both Santini and Agrapart ran solid overall time performances, though the latter’s success in the Cleeve Hurdle still leaves him with a bit to find if this year’s Stayers’ Hurdle is up to its usual standard.

Of course, things could be rather different back here at the Festival, not least in terms of the ground. It may have been between soft and heavy on Saturday, but that seldom prevails in March, as the following table of the Timeform description of the going by-race at the Festival from 2000 to 2017 shows.

It is also worth remembering that plenty of those aforementioned future Festival winners that ran on Trials Day were beaten in January before triumphing in March. Black Op, who might have beaten Santini but for a blunder at the last, looks one of the better candidates in that regard.