Cheltenham Festival Review - Hurdling Heroes

This blog analyses the hurdle races for each day of the Cheltenham festival, by using direct time comparisons for each of the race winners. The charts are adjusted for weight carried and extra distance run to allow for direct comparison.

Tuesday 12th March

Champion Hurdle Day saw the three Grade 1s all run to similar overall times over the 2-mile course, and after adjusting the mares race to account for the extra distance run. The Champion Hurdle itself was most slowly run, with State Man being furthest back at 3 out compared to the Supreme and Mares Hurdle, before finishing in the quickest time of the day. Comparisons with the Boodles juvenile hurdle, suggest the Grade 1s were up to 35 lengths superior, and worthy of ratings in the low 160s. Solid performances, if nothing spectacular, and both State Man and Lossiemouth have recorded more impressive performances.

Wednesday 13th March

Day 2 produced a visually much more breath-taking performance, in that of Ballyburn, and analysis of the times confirms this. Direct comparison with the Coral Cup highlight the superiority of the Willie Mullins trained runner, which put him about 40 lengths ahead of Langer Dan. It was seemingly a relatively weak Coral Cup this year, and they went quite slowly in the middle of that race, but we are definitely dealing with a 170+ horse in Ballyburn. The performance of bumper winner Jasmin De Vaux looks strong, with the market principles coming to the fore. It was a well-run race and I would predict it will work out to be a stronger than average renewal.

 Thursday 14th March

The results for Day 3 need to be caveated by the fact that it rained on and off throughout the day, worsening the ground conditions somewhat. It is always pretty much impossible to directly calculated the effect of any rain, but despite this we can comfortably conclude it was an average renewal of the Stayers Hurdle, with comparisons showing Teahupoo finishing well behind 138 rated Pertemps winner Monmiral. The Stayers Hurdle was very slowly run, with Teahupoo 26 lengths behind Monmiral at 4 out. He was able to gain 10 lengths on Monmiral from 4 out to the line, but it is hard to be too enthusiastic about the form. The steadily-run nature of the race would have suited Teahupoo, who has strong form over half a mile further. The Mares Novice Hurdle was also very steadily run, all the way up to 2 out, and it became a bit of a game of cat and mouse. The finishing speed of 114% for the winner Golden Ace highlights this.

Friday 15th March

Gold Cup Day started with a strongly-run Triumph hurdle won nicely by Majborough. It’s fair to say Truimph hurdle winners have mixed success when stepping into open company, but this looks very solid form. As a contrast, the County hurdle was very slowly run, with Absurde being over 35 lengths behind Majborough at 3 out. The fact Absurde was able to make up so much ground in such a steadily-run race speaks volumes of his performance. Given he also prefers better ground, he looks very capable of stepping up to graded hurdles, should connections decide to go down that route. The Albert Bartlett was also very slowly run, with the first circuit (measured from first hurdle to last hurdle) being 17 seconds (around 75 lengths) slower than the second. Races run like this always favour front runners and the form looks a bit unreliable.