Watch And Learn: Graeme North timefigure analysis Sandown Solario Stakes and Ireland
By Graeme North
08:35 · SUN September 08, 2024
Our timefigure guru Graeme North rounds up all the key action from last week including significant two-year-old action in England and Ireland.
A slightly shorter column than usual this week with York’s August meeting out of the way and both the St Leger Festival at Doncaster and the Irish Champions Festival in Ireland still a couple of weeks away.
There might have been just six Group races last week, all at Group Three level, augmented by four Listed contests, but one of the unrelenting attractions of this great game of ours is its ever-changing cast, both equine and human, and two of the Group races restricted to two-year-olds last week contained names we will surely be hearing a lot more of either later this year or next.
Why was City Of York Juddmonte timefigure not higher?
Before then, I’ve had a few enquiries after last week’s column asking why after City Of Troy lowered Sea The Stars' track record in the Juddmonte International by almost a second, his timefigure wasn’t any higher than 120.
That’s a fair question which I’ll answer briefly here. Track records nearly always come about because of very fast conditions and, unsurprisingly, very fast conditions help even ordinary horses run fast. For a recent and powerful example, look no further than South Parade, a three-year-old handicapper who smashed the six-furlong course record at Thirsk in August by 0.39 seconds despite running off a lowly official rating of just 60.
It’s not the absolute time that a horse records on the day that dictates its final timefigure, as that time by itself is meaningless, but its relation to all the other winning times recorded on the day and how far they have deviated from ‘standard time’ (the time a horse of pre-determined ability is expected to run the distance carrying weight for age and which has been calculated from performances of thousands of horses that have raced at the track before) after due allowance has been made for the ages of the horses involved, weights carried, weight for age, the speed of the race surface, the strength and direction of the prevailing wind and any added yardage.
Only then can an accurate assessment of the winning time be made, and when all the calculations were done and dusted on Juddmonte International day, City Of Troy’s winning time, while good – very few horses manage to record a timefigure of 120, for example – it wasn’t as good relatively as those posted by The Lion In Winter in the Acomb (itself a new juvenile track record) or both Star Of Lady M and Yes I’m Mali in the concluding handicaps on the straight course.
City Of Troy - York timefigure explained
Curragh winner shines on the clock
With all due respect to events at Sandown, which hosted an interesting two-day meeting including the Sky Bet Solario Stakes whose winner Field Of Gold drew plenty of headlines, rightly or wrongly, in the Sunday papers, the most meritorious performance of the week in those Group races, at least on the clock, came at the Curragh where Ides Of March posted a 101 timefigure in the Round Tower Stakes.
By Wootton Bassett out of a Timeform 114-rated Grade One winner in the States at a mile, Ides Of March has quickly assembled a very progressive profile, learning enough from his first run when sent off a 14/1 shot to finish three-and-a-quarter lengths third to stablemate The Lion In Winter on his second.
As suggested by that run, however, where he finished slowly, the drop back to six furlongs has been the making of him, at least for now, winning a 19-runner maiden at the Curragh (where he’s had all his races) by three lengths before his Round Tower win where he travelled fluently before quickening clear impressively to score by three-and-a-quarter lengths from the Molecomb fifth Usdi Atohi.
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Factoring sectional upgrades into the picture puts an even better spin on the winner's performance, however – Timeform awarded him an 8lb upgrade from the three-furlong marker (his penultimate furlong dipped under eleven seconds according to Race IQ) so taking his overall time performance to 109. As might be expected, he’s entered in all the big end-of-season two-year-old races between six furlongs and seven furlongs, and though his trainer has other potential candidates for the Middle Park (Whistlejacket, Henri Matisse) I doubt this fellow is far behind them if at all.
The Round Tower wasn’t the only two-year-old Group race at the Curragh that produced a good timefigure – in the Flame of Tara Stakes, Ides Of March’s stable companion Dreamy posted a 98 which can be upgraded to 101 after sectionals are incorporated.
Dreamy had made a winning debut over seven furlongs at Goodwood in a modest timefigure against rivals that in all honesty looked a bit too ordinary to be parading at a major Flat racing Festival, but she looked much more the real deal on this occasion, taking up the running over a furlong out and always looking like holding on.
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The other Group race on the Curragh card, the Snow Fairy Fillies Stakes, went to Tarawa who beat the year-younger Hanalia in a 98 timefigure. She’s capable of better than that on the clock – she’s run a 105 and a 100 before – but she didn’t need to be here given she was better placed here than the runner-up who’d run very well in the Irish Oaks (sixth) the time before but found herself injudiciously held up in last place dropped three furlongs in trip, finding the post coming too soon. She’d pulled off exaggerated waiting tactics off in a Listed race at Naas in June but in view of the circumstances here, still looks an unexposed filly to me.
How good was Solario winner?
As mentioned earlier, the Sunday morning paper headlines revolved around Field Of Gold whose yard had won the Solario before with Kingman, Too Darn Hot and Raven’s Pass among other lesser lights. This isn’t a race the Gosden’s target regularly and they have won it more often with their obviously carefully-chosen entries than the occasions they haven’t.
The 122 timefigure Raven’s Pass posted in 2007 remains easily the best by any winner this century and has only been approached once which was by Too Darn Hot in 2018; at the other end of the scale three of the four lowest winning timefiigures were also recorded by Gosden-trained runner with Kingman’s and Field of Gold’s ordinary 84 even a fair bit better than Reach For The Moon (64) posted in 2021.
Reach For The Moon’s 64 timefigure came with a 37lb upgrade after a final four-furlong split as measured by Timeform of 47.75 seconds, however, so taking his overall timerating to 101, but no such claim can be made for Field of Gold whose 49.82 seconds finishing split (102.61% finishing speed) equates to an upgrade of just 4lb using that sectional point.
That said, the more detailed sectionals available from RaceIQ view put Field of Gold in a more favourable light. Using the best of his fractions from three furlongs out his overall time rating can be upgraded to 97 by my calculations but, equally, that approach paints an even rosier picture for the runner-up Maturai Bay whose upgrade is slightly less than Field of Gold’s using the four-furlong point but as much as 3lb higher using his final furlong sectional where he was really motoring after finally getting the space to hit his stride.
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Three other races over seven furlongs on the same card, including one that was well run enough to return a winning timefigure within 4lb of the winning form rating, is as comprehensive set of comparative on-the-day data as you could wish for when deciding upon final timefigures and clearly the Solario was slightly underwhelming in that respect.
That’s not to say Field Of Gold will not turn out to be a high-class horse but his next race will surely be a better pointer to his future prospects. Both Kingman and Too Darn Hot were good enough to win again over seven furlongs before finishing second in their respective 2000 Guineas; Raven’s Pass wasn’t despite his Solario timefigure and finished fourth in his. Field of Gold’s next reported target is the Jean-Luc Lagardere over 1400m (not even seven furlongs) on a much sharper track than Sandown and if he can win that I’d say his Guineas prospects would have to be pretty good.
Tamfana was a good winner of the Atalanta Stakes on the same card, scoring in a 103 timefigure which is 4lb below the 107 figure (no upgrade) she posted in the 1000 Guineas but after upgrades are factored in comes out at a 4lb higher at 111. Her trainer David ‘The Carpenter’ Menuisier will surely keep the French Oaks third at a mile now after oddly stepping her up to a mile-and-a-half in the Grand Prix de Paris.
Friday maiden form looks very strong
There had been another interesting two-year-old contest at Sandown the day before which had been won by the newcomer Jonquil, in the Juddmonte ownership and trained by Sir Michael Stoute.
Jonquil had a very rough passage, pretty much hemmed in for penultimate furlong, before finally getting out and doing enough to hold the challenge of the Ralph Beckett-trained Centigrade by a short head. Once again, the winning timefigure wasn’t anything special – 74 – and neither were the upgrades from four furlongs out, but the race was full of good-looking and well-bred sorts from good stables for all none of the runners has as yet a pattern entry.
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There’s no doubt the winner showed plenty of courage to overcome adversity but given the steadily-run nature of the race, third placed Tycoon is also one for the notebooks going forward. He was slowly away under Oisin Murphy and behind runners for much of the straight, but when he finally he got out he made good headway, emerging with a better upgrade than the winner using all the furlong markers from the three to the one and no upgrade coming in bigger than the final one which I calculated using RaceIQ data as 29lb compared to the winner’s 24.
Using those weighted upgrades (Timeform are unable to return anything any closer to the winning line because of unhelpful camera angles) Jonquil’s overall timerating comes in at 97 (which would have been higher had he been able to extricate himself earlier, obviously) and Tycoon’s at 96 while Centigrade comes in at 91 and Troy Story, the only one of the first four with previous experience, 74 which is on a par with his Timeform performance rating (Jonquil was given 89p, Centigrade 86p and Tycoon 85P).
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