Sectional Timing Debrief: York Ebor Festival

There are other horseracing festivals with a bigger international pull, but it is difficult to think of a major one which is more enjoyable than York’s Ebor Meeting.

Heavy rain turned the ground to “good to soft” on the opening day but did not dampen spirits for long or prevent the appearance of top-class horses contesting top-notch races. By Saturday, the surface had returned to something close to the original forecast of “good to firm”.

One of the few things that was missing was electronic sectional times, provided in previous years by TurfTrax but dropped this time round. British racing seems remarkably good at leaving the customer wanting a bit more.

It is, however, possible to get accurate split times from TV coverage and to put them into context using pars, and that is exactly what Timeform has done, not just for this meeting but for the vast majority of Flat meetings in Britain and Ireland for some years now.

The following will look at the main events – which were also teed up beforehand in my preview of the Ebor Festival – from a sectional point of view. 

There were two excellent winning performances on the opening day, from Cracksman in the Great Voltigeur Stakes and from Ulysses in the International Stakes. The latter was stronger judged on overall time, but Cracksman went quite some way to closing the gap with those power-packed closing sectionals.

The Great Voltigeur was run at a sound enough pace, but it was not just a case of Cracksman running away from tiring horses at the business end. Those closing sectionals are fast for the conditions for a race at 12f, and slightly faster in absolute terms for the last 2f than recorded by Ulysses at a shorter distance 35 minutes later.

Cracksman gets a 5 lb upgrade from his timefigure of 121, in line with the difference between his finishing speed % (speed in last 3f compared to average speed for race overall) and the par for course and distance.

He was not hard pushed late on, and separate analysis shows that he was devouring the ground with a stride in the 25-feet to 26-feet range right through to the finish.

It may be no coincidence that this personal best came on Cracksman’s first attempt on a flat and galloping track, and when encountering a sound pace. He deserves to be regarded as the best three-year-old mile-and-a-half colt in Europe after this.

Churchill and Barney Roy, and maybe one or two others at shorter distances, would be about as good, but that pair was put in their place by Ulysses in a well-run International which produced the faster older-horse Timeform timefigure (127) of the year so far in Britain and Ireland.

That final furlong is not all that fast, especially for Barney Roy, who had demonstrated sharp speed in his earlier races and might not quite have got home. But the spurt put in by Ulysses halfway up the straight means he still gets a small upgrade for a finishing speed % that is higher than par.

Ulysses is very good, but let’s not forget what Enable did to him at Ascot the time before or what she did to lesser fillies in the Yorkshire Oaks the following day.

It should be noted that the Yorkshire Oaks was run over 11 yards longer than the previous day’s Great Voltigeur due to rail movements, and a steady early pace (which was set by Enable) further led to a markedly slower time.

Enable might not have set the world on fire in terms of that overall time, but she did achieve something pretty remarkable in the conditions in running a sub-11.0s furlong halfway up the straight. Her last 2f were not so impressive – Coronet and Nezwaah actually made a little ground on her – but by then she had sealed matters anyway.

In timing terms, this was not quite as authoritative as Enable’s fast-time wins in the Oaks at Epsom and the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot. But she did what was asked of her, and some, while underlining yet again that she has raw speed to go with her proven stamina.

Even more raw speed, but not a lot of stamina, was in evidence on Friday in the Nunthorpe Stakes, which was billed as a showdown between Battaash and Lady Aurelia. In the event, the former boiled over beforehand and failed to run to his best, while the latter managed to lose a race which she looked to have – and arguably should have – won.

Frankie Dettori held onto Lady Aurelia early more than has sometimes been the case before letting rip mid-race. Meanwhile, Luke Morris on Marsha played a slightly more patient game before closing late in the day.

That final furlong is slow in sprinting terms – equivalent to a 95% finishing speed for the winner – and it meant that Marsha could run down her rival, on whom Dettori celebrated prematurely.

It is important to underline here, however, that no jockey knows precisely how much horse he has under him at any given stage, and sectionals can be analysed in such detail only with the benefit of hindsight. A 12.35s final furlong by Lady Aurelia, rather than the 12.4s she actually recorded, would have been enough to win it.

As it is, Marsha ran her race slightly more efficiently than did Lady Aurelia, and that seemed to make the difference given that the difference was wafer-thin come the line.

Comparisons with past Nunthorpes, for which we have TurfTrax times, underline this message: this year’s race was comparable with all bar the very fast 2016 running until 2f out but slower from there on.

That trio of Group 1s, plus the bonus of a particularly noteworthy Group 2 in the Great Voltigeur, were among 25 races over the four days, every one of them worth at least £70,000 in added prize money. Individual sectionals and upgrades exist for all those races in Timeform’s Sectional Archive.

The horses added to Timeform’s list of Sectional Flags (which produced winners through Tangled and Mustashry during the week) are: Cracksman; Euchen Glen (a strong finisher behind Magic Circle in a slowly-run race on Wednesday); Hey Jonesy (clear on his side having done a lot of running mid-race in the opener on Thursday); Mustashry (quick finish and decent overall time when obliging on Saturday); and Flymetothestars (who ran the quickest last 3f – 36.44s – in either the Ebor Handicap or the Melrose Handicap on Saturday).