Our man David Ord devoured a game pie before talking handicap plunge horse Kopeck De Mee with the assessors at Cheltenham on Tuesday.
The Cheltenham Weights Lunch.
My word have I made that pay over the years. We’ve toured the Cotswolds in the culinary sense one year, from sausages to game pies via ham and pickles, we tasted the best of the region. Others showed a more varied palate to be fair.
World tours followed, always under the watchful eye of the portion police, but there were no disapproving glances if you decided to make return trips to Mexico and India as you lapped the room.
The event is there though to pull back the curtain on the – well weights – for the Festival handicaps. Nine this time around.
It lacks the razzmatazz of the Randox Grand National event, but local trainers are on hand and the men who crunched the numbers there to take questions and pelters.
There aren’t too many of the latter, mainly I suspect because Irish handlers aren’t represented.
And the handicappers have more evidence to work with, changes to the qualification criteria mean they get at least one more piece of evidence to assess each horse.
But there are still curveballs along the way.
I’m talking about you Kopeck De Mee. Favourite for a couple of handicaps after the minimum number of qualifying runs, all in France, owned by JP McManus and trained by Willie Mullins.
136 was the magic number for him – but how on earth do you even start to get to that number? Thankfully I didn’t have to. Michael Harris and his team did.
In the event it was relatively straightforward.
“It’s an interesting profile. He’s had the five runs, the extra run that’s required this year, all in France. May was his last run, he hasn’t run in Britain or Ireland but there’s no ruling in place to say they can’t run because of that,” he said.
“We just treat him as we would any other French import in Britain. Our scale we use is a times two conversion from the French rating - based on data we’ve used over the years. We found using the 2.2 conversion we initially had, the ratings were too high, and they weren’t competitive when they came over.
“So, we use the times two conversion and rated 68 in France, the 136 is just a mathematical conversion of the French mark.”
And how does this work as a general rule?
“This season in general a lot of the juveniles with ratings have come over and they usually end up starting on the times two and then coming down so maybe they’re on the high side as a general sort of level, but you do get different profiles.
“Kopek De Mee has won his last three and looks to be progressing while some of the others are more exposed. We just use a baseline for consistency and do what the data shows us.
“The way our policy is, the way we interpret French ratings, there’s nothing else we can do in terms of the opening mark. “
Martin Greenwood and his team produced the chase ratings, National Hunt Chase favourite Now Is The Hour his Kopek De Mee. Well sort of.
“Stumptown and this horse are the shortest priced favourites in the chase handicaps. It caused a bit of controversy this one, I was getting texts, emails about the horse after his last run, ‘he caught the eye, don’t give him a mark’.
“But he’d already been given one when he was entered in November so that was out of the question and was two lengths down two out, fluffed that, and ended up beaten four lengths at the line. If that’s the only Irish race you’ve ever watched and that caused you so much concern, you don’t watch enough Irish racing.
“He’s 139, 135 in Ireland. Obviously, the punters have latched on to him. He’s unexposed over a marathon trip such as three and three-quarter miles. How many horses have tried that distance though? Virtually none and we’ll see if he’s even shorter in the betting on the day.”
And what of those looking to get one over on the assessors? Well, I sat next to Rory Delargy for the unveiling of the weights and Mint Boy was the very first horse he dashed to with his biro in the Kim Muir.
I took that as a sign as I ate my venison lunch and pondered the fact we’ll be back here in two weeks’ time. Cheltenham racecourse was bathed in glorious sunshine. We’re nearly there folks.
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