Timefigure analysis for Cheltenham Festival hopes Champ Kiely and Tahmarus

Lawlor's casts shadow over Tolworth

The week just gone over jumps was a welcome pause after the unrelenting Christmas and New Year action, but it has nevertheless thrown up several Festival clues in the last few years.

The feature event at Sandown, the Unibet Tolworth Hurdle, has gone to subsequent Sky Bet Supreme winners Constitution Hill and Summerville Boy in recent seasons, while the highlight at Naas, the Lawlor’s Of Naas Hurdle, has been won by subsequent Ballymore winners Bob Olinger and Envoi Allen, as well as Ginto, who was well on his way to winning the Albert Bartlett before breaking down in the home straight. So, what to make of the latest renewals?

If I had to choose which race this year is more likely to throw up a Festival winner it would be the Lawlor’s Of Naas. Indeed, I’d say it is no contest. Both hurdles may have carried Grade 1 status but it’s a gloomy reflection of the current strength in depth on either side of the Irish Sea that not only was the Naas race contested by a number of horses with genuine prospects at Grade 1 level, but an equal number could have taken their place, whereas almost exactly the opposite could have said about the Sandown contest.

Favourite for the Lawlor’s, though relatively weak in the face of sustained support for the eventual winner Champ Kiely, was Grangeclare West, whose comfortable Navan win in an ordinary time hadn’t worked out particularly well, and for whom the jury is out now after he was found to be blowing hard and coughing post-race after labouring up the home straight with his head slightly high and to one side.

His defeat – another in a season of setbacks for owners Cheveley Park, whose Allaho still retains his position at the head of the Ryanair betting despite little positive news and time starting to ebb away – saw him pushed out to 16s for the Ballymore, while Champ Kiely was cut to 7s in a market headed by the Challow winner Hermes Allen and last year’s Fred Winter gamble Gaelic Warrior.

For all I’m fairly certain Champ Kiely is a good horse, I’m not sure he quite deserves the accolades he attracted after the race or is better fit for the Ballymore than the Supreme.

He might have won over the Ballymore trip at Galway in the summer but that race on fast summer ground was a sharp test of speed (won easily in a timefigure of just 113) and his defeat in the Royal Bond at Fairyhouse where he raced keenly behind the pace before pulling his way to the front only to empty after the last (timefigure 142) was a result of doing too much too soon under conditions far more severe than he faced at Naas.

As I mentioned last week, races where obstacles are omitted (and there were four of the eleven flights were left out at Naas because of the low sun, an unsatisfactory state of affairs given the status of the race) give those horses on the front end a sizeable advantage given they can control the circumnavigation of the race, and a 131 timefigure confirms that Champ Kiely, who possesses no shortage of speed, had things his own way in front at Naas under a ride that his rider Danny Mullins executes so well.

He’d be no sure thing with me to confirm form with the runner-up Irish Point should the pair meet again with a full complement of hurdles to be jumped, with the third and fourth horses Dawn Rising and Inothwayuthinkin likely to get closer another day too.

Earlier in the card, the novice chase went the way of Appreciate It in a 129 timefigure and the mares beginners chase was won by Telmesumthinggirl in 119 despite a much stronger pace. As that remark indicates, Appreciate It very much had a solo unchallenged out in front in a race his stable-companion Blue Lord won last year on his way to third place in the Arkle, all the more so after his only serious rival Top Bandit met an untimely end early in the race.

His jumping didn’t look foot perfect to me, which might be a concern at Cheltenham where the fences come together faster than they do at the better tracks in Ireland, not least at two miles, so it might be the Brown Advisory is a more suitable target than the Arkle.

If Telmesumthinggirl runs at the Festival, it will surely be in the Mares' Hurdle, which her jockey Rachael Blackmore reportedly felt she would have won last year had she stayed on her feet.

You’ll rarely see a more error-ridden winning round of jumping than she got away thanks to the shortcomings of her rivals, so she deserves some credit at least for pulling the race out of the bag. However, she ran the distance from the last fence to the line getting on for four seconds slower than the 115-rated handicapper Shakeytry managed in the later handicap chase, in a desperately slow-motion finish, and I couldn’t have her on my mind for Cheltenham even back over hurdles after such an exhausting effort.

A tale of two Gold Cup horses

Staying with the de Bromhead team I wrote last week about how I find him a fairly ‘easy read’ in post-race interviews and with that in mind it was interesting to hear him speak about A Plus Tard after one of his winners last week.

In between punctuating the interview with lots of ”I don’t know”, it seemed quite clear to me that de Bromhead favoured going straight to the Gold Cup but the more I listened and the more he referred to others who might have an input into that decision it seems he might end up at the Dublin Racing Festival, which, given his record fresh, might not be an unnecessary move. In a similar vein, I also saw an interview with Lucinda Russell who trains a horse, Ahoy Senor, whose career I wrote in a recent column is in danger of becoming a disappointment.

Bizarrely described by Sean Boyce, who was interviewing her, as a ‘brilliant, brilliant horse’, Russell also referred to him as a ‘freak’ as the plaudits escalated but she also mentioned that working with a talented if underachieving (my opinion) horse like him means you are sometimes too close to the action and her intention to run in the Gold Cup seemed to me a case of not being able to see the wood for the trees.

Tolworth form uninspiring

I wrote back in the autumn when highlighting a couple of hurdlers whose effort on the clock looked better than the bare form of their races that Tahmuras’ debut gave him good claims to being seen as a 130+ horse and though he has gone on to show himself just that, I wasn’t expecting him two starts later to be winning a Grade 1.

It would seem to me that’s largely because he hasn’t really had to improve that much with his Listed win at Haydock coming in at 122 on timefigures and upgrades and his Tolworth win, where the first four were covered by under six lengths, worth no more than 135 once a 1lb upgrade is added to the final timefigure.

Indeed, Tahmuras was only marginally faster than the winner of the opening juvenile hurdle, I Have A Voice, from the last hurdle to the winning line despite having run the distance from the second last and third last to the finish getting on for half a second and a second and a half slower.

Love Envoi ambled to an easy win in the Mares' Hurdle to enhance – seemingly – her claims for the Cheltenham race that carries that name but a 115 timefigure with only one serious rival to beat probably said more about the uncompetitive fare that helped keep spectators away more than anything else.

The best relative timefigure of the day over the smaller obstacles was posted by Hardy Du Seuil in the final race. Despite the deteriorating conditions, he came home from the third last, second last and last hurdles fastest of all, as much as nearly two seconds (or getting on for ten lengths) faster from the third last and nearly a second (getting on for four lengths) from the last than anything else.

This is the time of year when some Cheltenham reputations get exposed as paper thin and one of those that blew away in the Sandown wind and rain was Gary Moore’s Bo Zenith in the opening race. A winner of a newcomers hurdle at Auteuil back in April from Blood Destiny, a winner for Willie Mullins in December and now rated 126p by Timeform, Bo Zenith started at 11/4-on having opened up much shorter and perhaps not surprisingly in view of his market weakness dropped away very tamely.

I’m never in a rush to take French jumps form at face value given some of the heavy track biases often prevalent over there (as anyone who watched Cagnes-sur-Mer last week will know) as well as official going descriptions and ratings that are far removed from reality (the ground at Auteuil looked much quicker than the official) but it still was somewhat surprising that there was no steward’s enquiry into his performance.

Drone-ing on again

At least there was an enquiry into one race at Newcastle last week in a rare mention right now in this column for Flat racing. I wrote earlier this summer that when I was racing at Dieppe in August by far the most revealing race coverage was not that provided by the official cameras (of which there were too few anyway) but the overhead drone operated by a young lad who left the stewards box shortly before the official off time and maneuvered the drone around in real time high and directly above the runners before landing back at base once the race had finished.

While it was near impossible to ascertain from the official pictures what was happening for most of Dieppe’s straight five-and-a-half furlongs, not least with the head-on pictures foreshortening distances between the runners, the drone coverage ensured everything was there to see with no hiding place.

Drone coverage over here largely remains the exclusivity of those looking to gain an edge in fast pictures, but I suspect Kraken Power’s ride at Newcastle – for which explanations were noted – would have been seen in a much different light had those overhead shots been available.

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