Watch & Learn: Timefigure analysis from Graeme North

‘Champions Day’.

Five Group One or Two races all won by horses who had never won at that level before with two of them unconsidered in the betting at 40/1 and 20/1 not unsurprisingly had the purists on Racing Twitter, if such a class exists, pining once again for the good old days when the race after which the meeting is named was run at Newmarket earlier in the calendar.

Much as the Derby won’t ever be returning to first Wednesday in June, Champions Day won’t be going anywhere any time soon either and my own opinion is that it’s none the worse for it.

Is Champions Day at the right track at the right time?

Sure, results would probably have been different had the meeting taken place a month or so beforehand on faster ground, but half the beauty of holding the meeting so late in the year it seems to me is discovering how many of those horses who have dominated the early part and middle part of the season can still maintain that dominance (so long as they turn up of course) so late in the season often under adverse conditions.

Indeed, the greatest moment in the history of Champions Day, as it always will be, was the day Frankel put his unbeaten record on the line in the Champion Stakes against Cirrus des Aigles in 2012 under conditions the French heavyweight and reigning champion revelled in yet were alien to Frankel. That win, on soft ground on just his second start beyond a mile, might not have been his best performance but given the circumstances was the one that in my mind marked him as a true champion.

If there is anything that Ascot could have done differently over the course of the week other than to try and ensure the straight course was as fair as possible across its whole width, it was to have committed to either of the inner or outer courses much earlier than they did.

In the event the late switch to the inner turf course caused its own problems with starts having to be re positioned for two of the three races and the distances of those races reduced. Unfortunately, standard times for the two races affected (the Long Distance Cup and the Fillies and Mares) derived from their nearest equivalent distances on the usual round course made absolutely no sense when incorporated into timefigure calculations, suggesting at least one of those official distances was by some way incorrect, and so, as in 2019 when the inner course was also used, no timefigures were returned for the round course races which isn’t a satisfactory state of affairs.

Big Rock records best timefigure of the year

All that said, I’ve no doubt there was an equine champion on the day and you would have to search hard among previous Queen Elizabeth II winners for a more appropriate performance than the one Big Rock posted – indeed, since the meeting was first run at Ascot in 2011 no winner of the race has run such a high timefigure (131, which is not only the best timefigure this year but the second best in Britain since 2020 after Baaeed’s 135 in the 2022 Juddmonte International) nor has any horse won by so far as six lengths (the biggest winning margin before Big Rock was four which was set by Frankel).

As the sceptics lined up, someone I follow on social media posted ‘Why can’t some of you just enjoy an astonishing performance? To keep up those sectionals on that ground suggest he’s a phenomenally gifted horse! Just because he’s French trained & by a sire you’ve all given up on’.

My thoughts entirely and Big Rock’s sectionals do indeed make extraordinary reading. He ran the first six furlongs of his race faster than Art Power covered the six furlongs in the Sprint, and though that comparison isn’t strictly alike because of topography and other factors he strung together four consecutive furlongs of 12.3 seconds or faster according to TPD data while Art Power only managed three and then followed that half mile up with another lung-bursting 12.53 sixth furlong from which there was no comeback.

A 96.3% finishing speed from the three-furlong marker (even lower over from the two-furlong and one-furlong poles) compared to Art Power’s 100.2% illustrates just how hard he went off and far from getting loose on the lead and being seen to maximum advantage it seemed to me he took all his rivals out of their comfort zones very early on.

Let’s be clear, we weren’t witnessing anything new from Big Rock here and I’m not sure even now he has got the credit he deserves. If Racing Twitter has a blind spot, it’s an appreciation of overseas form.

Quite a few accounts I follow have asked in recent months where replays of racing in France can be found (freely available on the France Galop website in exchange for an email address) but those who use them will surely remember his win in the Prix de Guiche at Chantilly back in May.

That was the last time he encountered properly soft ground back and he blew the race apart from the front with no less than Horizon Dore five lengths back in second which would have been eight had Big Rock not eased right down. That performance saw him sent off a very short-priced favourite for the Prix du Jockey-Club where only Ace Impact got the better of him on much quicker ground. He’s a good horse under those conditions, sure, second also in Jacques le Marois and Prix du Moulin since, but there’s little doubt he’s a top-class miler and easily the best in Europe right now on very soft ground.

Should Kyprios and Kinross have won?

The day had begun with the reduced Long Distance Cup which saw the second run this year for the last year’s Ascot Gold Cup winner Kyprios. According to one social media post I read not long after the race the definition of a bad ride is getting re-passed by a horse you have already passed.

There’s more than an element of truth in that and had Kyprios been ridden more efficiently – he made his ground from the rear far too quickly, making up around ten lengths on Trawlerman between the six-furlong marker and the two-furlong marker - he’d surely have prevailed readily instead of losing out narrowly. Using that same definition, then Frankie Dettori must have ridden a bad race too on Kinross in the Sprint?

Like Kyprios he was produced from some way (if nowhere near so far back) and emerged with a 4lb bigger upgrade only to lose out narrowly as Art Power (who was running in the race for the fourth time and had apparently hit his head on the stall in the Abbaye last time) fought back after being headed.

The Group One races concluded with a cracking finish to the QIPCO Champion Stakes with Derby runner-up King Of Steel running down Via Sistina near the line. A finishing speed percentage around 98% (assuming the advertised distance was correct) points to a truly-run race that might have panned out differently had Oisin Murphy not dropped his whip on the narrowly beaten runner-up Via Sistina or Horizon Dore not taken so long to settle on ground slower than he’s been showing a blistering turn of foot on in France in recent races.

Poptronic had a ‘reverse Trueshan’ moment in the Filly & Mares, kept away from soft ground all her career only to run a career best on the first time she encounters it.

Murphy masterpiece in France

Murphy might have had an ear bashing from Via Sistina’s owner after the Champion but you can’t keep a champion jockey down for long and he was in outstanding form at Saint-Cloud the following day with his winning ride on Caius Chorister not only a masterclass in understanding and then delivering the optimum ride needed to maximise performance but also an awareness of switching track position as new information comes in.

On a day when all of the winners of the five Group races that took place ran the last 600m a fair bit slower than at least one of the horses that chased them home, Murphy’s opening win came on Sunway in the Group 1 Criterium International.

Last seen chasing home Iberian in the Champagne Stakes at Doncaster, Sunway looked to have a very tough opponent in Alcantor who I wrote about glowingly in this column a couple of weeks ago but he had nothing left late on after running the last 600m two lengths quicker from a launchpad even further back and found Sunway, who was hard up against the stand rail, too strong a stayer.

This strikes me as good form and much better than Los Angeles showed in getting the better of another couple of Irish raiders, among whom recent Arc weekend winner Islandsinthestream came home fastest but still relatively slowly, in a blanket finish to the other Group 1 for juveniles, the Criterium International.

Keep an eye out for Tyrgress

My old friend Belbek, about whom I have written plenty lately, unsurprisingly got back to winning ways for the first time this season in the Prix Perth, benefitting not only from the drop in grade but also a trouble-free passage on the softest ground he’s encountered since winning the Jean-Luc Lagadere last season. That race the far rail was no slower than the usually advantageous stand rail on bad ground at Saint-Cloud which Murphy was alert to on Caius Chorister in the Group 3 Prix Belle de Nuit.

Such an eyecatcher in the Sky Bet Ebor before running Post Impressionist to less than a length in the strongly-run Old Borough Cup at Haydock in September, the jockey had clearly done his homework and ensured there would be no repeat of the dawdling gallop that had worked against her in France last time by ensuring the race was a thorough test while still leaving enough to pull away again when joined and give David Menuisier a double. One of the rides of the season in my opinion.

The other Group race on the card, the Prix de Flore, went to the Jessica Harrington-trained Village Voice, though things might have been very different had third-placed Tygress (a daughter of the heavy-ground Irish Oaks winner Sariska) got any sort of run on the rail and fourth-placed Une Perle not made a kamikaze dash from the back to the front only to fade out of the places as that effort told. Both those fillies are worth keeping an eye out for in the plentiful listed contests for females that populate the end of the French calendar with the Lady Bamford-owned Tygress in particular very interesting if she steps up to 2400m.

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