7 minute read
Jumping at speed
A first article produced by Page Fuller from RaceiQ – she provides us with in-depth data analysis of jumping and race pace from some of the highlights of the four-day Festival
AS A STARTING POINT, it doesn’t get better than dissecting our flagship jumps racing meeting, the Cheltenham Festival.
The very nature of NH breeding means it can take a stallion a few years to land a top-level race, but we opened Festival week with one young stallion bagging his first Grade 1 – Shade Oak Stud’s Telescope. The breakthrough victory came courtesy of his six-year-old Slade Steel, whose only two career defeats from six runs have been behind Ballyburn, subsequent highly impressive winner of the Grade 1 Gallagher Novices’ Hurdle.
Under a typically cool ride from Rachael Blackmore, Slade Steel was produced off the bend and took the lead into the last. His backers must have had their hearts in their mouths as they saw him prick his ears as he approached it and start steadying as he went into the wings.
From our Lengths Gained Jumping Model (see below) the Henry de Bromhead-trained gelding gave away nearly a length and three-quarters to Mystical Power from this greenness, and yet he still managed to get back up to win convincingly.
The performance was certainly enough to suggest that there is plenty more to come from him.
In the Grade 1 Arkle Challenge Trophy, Found A Fifty (Solskjaer) proved that the fastest horse does not always win the race.
Found A Fifty registered the fastest Top Speed of all the runners we saw all week notching up a massive 36.84mph when charging down the hill, nearly a second faster than the 35.94 mph registered by the race winner Gaelic Warrior, whose jockey Paul Townend sat happily in behind the two pace setters.
On turning in, Townend made use of the Maxios six-year-old’s superior staying ability and the gelding won with plenty in hand.
Most horses tend to slow down as they reach the finish line, but the hill seemed to make little difference to Gaelic Warrior and he completed his final two furlongs in 15.55s and 15.67s. In comparison Found A Fifty tired to finish with final furlongs splits of 16.37s and 17.30s.
Festival Day 2 saw the Willie Mullinstrained Fact To File live up to every expectation had of him pre-race. His wellfancied opponent Stay Away Fay failed to set particularly strong fractions, even with the application of cheekpieces, which meant that Fact To File was able to use his speed to gallop them into the ground up the hill.
He recorded the highest Finishing Speed Percentage of all the chasers through the week – quickening up to 110.16 per cent. This meant he covered the last half a mile about 10 per cent quicker than he did through the rest of the race.
It was an impressive performance on the testing ground, but the progeny of his sire Poliglote do have a 20 per cent strike rate on soft ground (Racing Post) and 19 per cent strike rate on heavy so such a performance should not have been a surprise.
The leading stallion of the meeting was Saint Des Saints, and his progeny boast a 22 per cent strike-rate on heavy ground easily his progeny’s best ground record. Again it shouldn’t have been a surprise that Monmiral, Protektorat, and Sine Nomine all finished in front and carried the Haras d’Etreham-based 26-year-old stallion to joint-honours as leading sire (by number of winners) of the week.
Thursday was a stand-out with two horses recording very fast times – and the first might be a something of a revelation as it was the Grade 1 Stayers’ Hurdle winner Teahupoo, who posted the fastest Top Speed of any hurdlers over the four-day meeting.
IT IS NOT OFTEN you see a horse win at graded level over 2m, 2m4f as well as 3m, but the son of Masked Marvel was able to use his pace to such effect that he registered a Top Speed of 36.25mph when galloping down the hill.
With his jockey Jack Kennedy using that speed at the perfect moment, it meant the seven-year-old breezed into the race and was in the perfect challenging position turning in, yet without having used too much energy in order to register his first Grade 1 victory over the 3m trip.
The second speed machine on Thursday was the Jeremey Scott-trained Golden Ace in the Grade 2 Ryanair Mares’ Novice Hurdle.
The lack of race pace turned the finish into a sprint and winner recorded the fastest final furlong achieved over the four days – 14.83s, even faster than the 14.90s recorded by State Man in the Champion Hurdle.
It also meant that she clocked the highest Finishing Speed Percentage of the week with 114.48 per cent.
It is a good sign for her now dual-purpose stallion Golden Horn, who was bagging a first Festival winner. His delighted owner Jayne McGivern of Dash Grange Stud was all smiles in the winners’ enclosure and reported that the stallion’s book is full.
We don’t have a cheering monitor, but Golden Ace also received the biggest welcome of the week courtesy of seemingly a large Scott, West Country-based youth following.
Friday saw the return of the mighty Galopin Des Champs – his performance in
In the autumn when we launched our Lengths Gained Jumping Metric we gave the horse quite a hard time – his style of jumping means he sometimes hangs in the air and can give away unnecessary lengths.
We honed in on this when he was beaten in November’s 2m3f John Durkan Chase – his jumping saw him gave away 16l compared to his victor Fastorslow, and yet he was beaten less than 2l.
Back up to 3m and even his slightly ponderous jumping can’t stop him. The eight-year-old son of Timos has now produced three monster performances this season, and Townend’s positive Gold Cup ride seemed to help his jumping, too.
He gained more than 8l when jumping compared to Gerri Colombe (Elliott reported on Nick Luck on Sunday that his horse needs to “flatten” his technique), and even the loose-running rival Fastorslow didn’t distract Galopin des Champs’ focused run to the line.
Explaining the data behind the figures
O UR MISSION is to bring a new level of data analysis to horseracing alongside the rollout of sectional data across Britain and Ireland. With the help of GPS trackers that capture 18 data points per second, we can build an in-depth picture of a horse’s movements through a race.
Over time we will be developing a suite of metrics to be able to dig deeper into horses’ performances and understand more about what has happened within a race than our eye initially sees.
But we have used these two stats in this piece and here is how they are calculated.
Finishing Speed Percentage (FSP): uses the sectionals to calculate the speed a horse covers over the last half a mile of a race, as a percentage of its overall race speed.
Lengths Gained Jumping (LGJ) Model: uses speed and position data to measure every horse’s jumping performance.
If you imagine that the average horse jumping a fence records a zero – so that effectively zero is the par figure – we can put a positive or negative number of lengths on every horse’s jump at every fence.
That enables us to evaluate exactly how they’re jumping compared to the rest of the field.
Page Fuller: rode as a professional NH jockey for five years, and this next chapter of her career sees her working as lead editorial analyst for RaceiQ.
For more information on the data work carried out by iRaceQ take a look at the X feed @Race_iQ.
