James Willoughby: Allaho broke hearts of rivals and the clock in Ryanair Chase romp

From a parochial perspective, the 2021 Cheltenham Festival was either unforgettable or best forgotten – depending on which side of the Irish Sea your hopes reside. For everyone else, it was a tremendous four days of quality which can hardly have been surpassed.

Jumps racing can be enjoyed at any level you choose. It offers obvious thrills and spills, but also plenty to stimulate the grey matter – if that is your bag. On mainstream racing television, technical analysis has been de-emphasised because it is thought that broadening the appeal of the sport excludes trying to understand the numbers it produces, but Racing TV is attempting to fill that void.

To this end, sectional times provided in-running and as a retrospective tool added no end to the interest of the Festival. You can find these on the appropriate tab on each individual race result at www.racingtv.com/results, and taking the time to work through them will augment the knowledge of even the most traditionally minded jumps racing aficionado.

Remember, if you make an argument about the run of the race or the pace of a race, and someone else has been through the numbers, the chances are they will have a more informed view than you have. That is how every other sport works nowadays, and finally racing is no exception.

In this brief review of the Festival sectionals, we will feature a few basic analytical tools that can be applied by any sectionalista – beginner and expert alike. If you have dismissed sectionals before for whatever reason, you might be surprised to find how incredibly easy it is to arm yourself with the facts.

After all, even the most imaginative and ornate building needs to have solid foundations. Or else it tends to fall over in the end.

Action opened on the Old course and there were three hurdle races over two miles to facilitate the necessary comparison. Of course, races do not have to be on the same day, the same course or the same going to be compared against the clock. It hardly requires the computational skills which enabled us to get to the Moon in 1969 to understand that horses run more slowly up hills or on softer ground – and to make a principled allowance for these conditions by comparing the observed data with reasonable expectations.

The beauty of the framework that Racing TV employs to breakdown what sectionals say about the pace of a race, at least, is that it is largely independent of going. How can this be? By comparing a horse with itself instead of some universal standard on which most time analysis depends. We will see how this is done after referencing the data in a similar form as it appears on the RTV website:

‘Start – 4f’ and the four successive columns to its immediate right are the split times (in seconds) taken by the ‘Winner’ in each section of the course. ‘Time’ is the total time of the race, from the orange marker at the start to the finish line. ‘Last 4f’ is the sum of the splits of the final four furlongs. Why this distance? It provides a suitable granular interval which feeds ‘Fin%’ which is the first important metric we will use here – the relative percentage of speed for the closing furlongs of a race compared with the average speed of the race as a whole, known as ‘Finishing speed’.

Now, if you analyse the data for the Festival as a whole, the Fin % over the last four furlongs which yields the fastest performances of which a horse is capable is about 103%.

The fast pace obvious from watching the opening Grade 1 Sky Bet Supreme Novices’ Hurdle won by Appreciate It is confirmed by the splits of the three winners to the point where the finishing sectional begins four furlongs out.

The Willie Mullins-trained seven-year-old was 2.12sec faster to that point than Honeysuckle in the second of the three two-mile hurdles (shaded rows) but the mare was much fresher to produce a killing finishing split. She closed off 3.81sec faster to run a time 1.69sec better overall and is clearly one of the better winners of the Unibet Champion Hurdle.

Incidentally, the fact that mares receive 7lb from males in top jumps races in Britain is clearly wrong. There is no evidence which can justify it and thus it should be reduced immediately. As top Flat results show, 3lb is more than enough – weight acts on a horse in proportion to the distance. It is a misapprehension that bigger allowances are needed for longer distances, which data analysis shows is exactly what is wrong with Flat weight-for-age also.

We can infer from the data that the Supreme pace was way too strong for every horse except Appreciate It, and too strong ideally for him also. See how the juvenile Jeff Kidder got within 1.45sec of his finishing time in the later Grade 3 Boodles Juvenile Handicap Hurdle? This was in part attributable to the surface being a little drier by this time. But note how Noel Meade’s winner distributed his energy the best of the three featured races, evinced by his Fin % of 103.27% which is close to the ideal. Had he run in the same race as Appreciate It, the data strongly suggests the gap between the two horses would have been a lot more than 1.45sec.

Shishkin put up one of the best performances of the meeting in the Sporting Life Arkle Trophy. The pace was also strong here (Allmankind and Captain Guinness overdid things) and the latest Nicky Henderson two-mile titan will be difficult to beat from now on.

The quality of the racing took no pause on Wednesday.

The two hurdle races over two miles, five furlongs both featured a fast finish.

Bob Olinger could follow other winners, most notably the great Istabraq, in stepping down to two miles next year for a crack at the Champion.

He is certainly not in need of a great test of stamina and came home 0.79sec faster than Coral Cup winner Heaven Help Us even though the latter was widely and correctly diagnosed as having benefitted from a great front-running ride.

Brown Advisory Novices’ Chase winner Monkfish did not jump as well as he can and did not get an end-to-end gallop to emphasise his superiority (he came home at 107.7% of race speed) like his stablemate Appreciate It, but he still earned an RPR of 170 and ran the last four furlongs faster than Put The Kettle On in the Betway Queen Mother Champion Chase!

The rangy chestnut is every bit as good as advertised and only seven years old. If he stays sound, he is poised to become one of the superstars of the sport.

The fact that Put The Kettle On was outfinished by a three-miler is not a reason to downrate her alone. But there are other reasons. Firstly, she is not winning a Champion Chase without the egregious 7lb mares allowance. And she would not have even won on the day had Nube Negra started his run alongside her and jumped the last cleanly. Let us look at the data for the first three finishers in the Champion Chase:

Nube Negra is not the easiest of rides and is held up for a reason. He and top-notch jockey Harry Skelton merely needed the field to go faster. Had that happened, however, Chacun Pour Soi would also have been better suited, for the Willie Mullins runner has a high cruising speed and is best when they go hard and he does not overdo things. In short, it was a messy race and the placings are open to revision next time. Good luck to all of them in trying to beat the flying Shishkin!

The task facing British horses became clear on Thursday with some of the most remarkable performances seen at the fixture.

Arguably not enough was made of Allaho’s amazing 12-length victory in the Grade 1 Ryanair Chase. This seven-year-old would have run through a series of brick walls on the day for he set a scorching pace and kept responding to an inspired Rachael Blackmore. He reached the point four furlongs out no less than 13.65sec ahead of The Shunter in the Grade 3 Paddy Power Plate, also over the extended two and a half miles.

This had its effect on the Cheveley Park charger, for sure, for he summoned the day’s slowest finishing split of 60.15sec, but it had a devastating effect on his rivals who were left exhausted in his wake.

How much did The Shunter have in hand? Answers on a postcard for, after belting the last, he really only reached full power in the last 100 yards and flew across the line. It is hard to win a Festival handicap like this, and harder still when the pace is not end-to-end. No wonder trainer Emmet Mullins and connections of the eight-year-old were smiling afterwards.

Later in the day, it suddenly appeared as if The Shunter may not have been the handicapper with most in hand after Mount Ida ultimately ran away with the Fulke Walwyn Kim Muir Challenge Cup. The daughter of Yeats had jumped diagonally when tailed off early but picked up the bridle from halfway and stormed home in 58.25sec (109.34% of race speed). Again, we witnessed an Irish-trained winner who produced a very sturdy finishing split. Imagine if she had jumped straight!

Another Irish-trained winner, Telmesomethinggirl may lack the high profile of some of her Henry De Bromhead stablemates but wait until she faces males again, 7lb light in the saddle. Off a steady pace, she lashed home in 53.91sec in the Grade 2 Parnell Properties Mares’ Novices’ Hurdle which was eclipsed only by Mrs Milner (52.84sec, 110.23%) in the Grade 3 Pertemps Network Final over three miles. The Paul Nolan-trained five-length winner is another who wants rating value for more. Very few staying hurdlers would have beaten her off 134 on the day.

Friday’s card opened with another Cheveley Park-owned winner, the Grade 1 Triumph Hurdle scorer Quilixios. He settled this with a good turn of foot. This race seemed to sum up the fortunes of the British-trained runners. David Pipe’s Adagio was perfectly ridden by Tom Scudamore but approaching the last the De Bromhead-trained beast found another gear. The winner’s Fin% of 110.30 shows that he was in a different league; he probably needs to be rated a stone better than these and is likely to develop into a top-class hurdler.

The pace in the 25-runner McCoy Contractors County Hurdle was not surprisingly stronger than generated by the eight juveniles. Coming from off the pace, Belfast Banter was still too good. This was a messy race with a lilting pace and, after the weights are revised, the field could generate multiple results in future.

Grade 1 Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle winner Vanillier was simply otherwordly in scoring by 11 lengths. His trainer, Gavin Cromwell can handle any type of horse capable of taking the breath away on occasions. He went off 14-1 here having been beaten 59 lengths in the mud when a sick horse on his previous start, but his 55.99sec split (107.8%) carried him well clear.

The two shaded rows are the chases over the extended three miles, two furlongs. In the WellChild Cheltenham Gold Cup, the likelihood is that dual winner Al Boum Photo ran as well as he can, but that the younger Minella Indo and A Plus Tard are better. Which is the superior De Bromhead-trained still remains to be proved, for the winner was the better placed in a race which did not bottom the three Irish-trained horses who dominated.

The final race of Cheltenham was the Martin Pipe Conditional Jockeys’ Handicap Hurdle, over two miles, four furlongs and 56 yards of the New Course. It was a poignant running, on account of the passing of Pipe’s longstanding assistant Chester Barnes.

We signed off from the meeting as we had started, with a highly impressive Willie Mullins-trained winner. Presumably, Galopin Des Champs was suited by dropping in class and encountering better going. e won really well from another well-treated runner in the Imperial Cup hero Langer Dan who travelled well throughout. The first two were many lengths clear. The runner-up was beautifully ridden by Harry Skelton and would have won on many occasions.