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Just watching replay of this race. Not many horses win a grade 1 by 41 lengths on the bridle. In itself it was a 165+ performance on just her third start.
Taken at anywhere near face value, that’s the best performance by a juvenile hurdler in the 36 years I’ve been following the sport. The RUK team were all certain that the rest of the field had all run below form, but they can’t all be useless and Apple’s Jade annihilated them.
Can’t wait to see if she can follow up at Punchestown; I would be backing her for next year’s Champion Hurdle (yes, we all know about the poor record of 5yos in the race) but you simply can’t tell with the Mullins horses.
I was going to start a thread about her myself.
There was plenty of crabbing about all the others not running their races and I appreciate sometimes you can get carried with horses on very soft ground (see Camping Ground) but the ground wasn’t that bad and for me that was the most striking performance of the entire season. She travelled like a dream and jumped like a Champion Hurdle winner.
All being well she goes to Punchestown but if she were mine I would just put her away and start thinking about the big one.
Just watching replay of this race. Not many horses win a grade 1 by 41 lengths on the bridle. In itself it was a 165+ performance on just her third start.
I would be taking that result with a large box of salt to be honest with you.
Looking back through the winning times for this race, 4m 16.5s looks desperately slow.
The favourite was a drifter, it being an open secret that he stank on soft before.
Alan King is 1/31 the past fortnight, so even Walter Mitty wouldn’t have been confident about Sceau Royal.
All in all it looked a poor and uncompetitive renewal of this race and the handicapper will need to be on tablets if he raises Apples Jade to 165+ on the basis of this.
Nice horse but I’d be cautious about getting to excited and believing 2 stone was found in the space of three weeks.
Thanks for the good crack. Time for me to move on. Be lucky.
Taken at anywhere near face value, that’s the best performance by a juvenile hurdler in the 36 years I’ve been following the sport. The RUK team were all certain that the rest of the field had all run below form, but they can’t all be useless and Apple’s Jade annihilated them.
Can’t wait to see if she can follow up at Punchestown; I would be backing her for next year’s Champion Hurdle (yes, we all know about the poor record of 5yos in the race) but you simply can’t tell with the Mullins horses.
Fortunately, I think Mullins has a little more difficulty dictating to Gigginstown.
If she progresses as a 5 year old then she will be aimed at world hurdle or mares hurdle. (Mullins suggested she could be a world hurdle horse) I would eat my hat if she was anywhere near the champion, not because of ability but because Mullins has enough of a headache with Annie, Faugheen, arctic fire, Nichols canyon, Wicklow brave that I don’t think he wants to add another into the 2mile mix.
I don’t agree that all her competitors today race below form. It’s statistically highly improbable that all of the horses in behind were below form. The horses in behind who finished were Ivanovic, azzuri, Diego du charmil, Roman de senam, sceau royal. Ivanovic and azzuri haven’t got ratings but id imagine Ivanovic would be about 148 and azzuri 141. That means she has beaten 5 horses rated over 140, by 41 lengths on the bridle, now some may have underperformed but the logic and stats will show that at least one of them will have ran to their rating, for example I don’t see anything to suggest that Diego du charmil didn’t run to his rating of 140. That would mean ivanovic ran to 145 which yes is an underperformance but for an horse to beat a decent grade one field by 41 lengths on the bridle is just unbelievable . An amazing performance.Apples Jade is a best price 16/1 for the Champion Hurdle for those who fancy a bet on her.
I recall a similar excitement about another Mullins Mare, Gitane Du Berlais, who won the Scilly Isles novices chase last January and had a lot of people getting exited about how good she might be.
It turned out she went on to be beaten favourite six times and won twice from the eight races where she went off favourite subsequently.
Punters will always be beguiled by big margin wins, sometimes they will be correct in their confidence but my gut feeling is that this was a race that wouldn’t have taken a lot of winning today. I’ll be fascinated to see what mark she is awarded and how she performs next time.
Thanks for the good crack. Time for me to move on. Be lucky.
If she progresses as a 5 year old then she will be aimed at world hurdle or mares hurdle. (Mullins suggested she could be a world hurdle horse) I would eat my hat if she was anywhere near the champion, not because of ability but because Mullins has enough of a headache with Annie, Faugheen, arctic fire, Nichols canyon, Wicklow brave that I don’t think he wants to add another into the 2mile mix.
I don’t agree that all her competitors today race below form. It’s statistically highly improbable that all of the horses in behind were below form. The horses in behind who finished were Ivanovic, azzuri, Diego du charmil, Roman de senam, sceau royal. Ivanovic and azzuri haven’t got ratings but id imagine Ivanovic would be about 148 and azzuri 141. That means she has beaten 5 horses rated over 140, by 41 lengths on the bridle, now some may have underperformed but the logic and stats will show that at least one of them will have ran to their rating, for example I don’t see anything to suggest that Diego du charmil didn’t run to his rating of 140. That would mean ivanovic ran to 145 which yes is an underperformance but for an horse to beat a decent grade one field by 41 lengths on the bridle is just unbelievable . An amazing performance.As I suggested above Mullins will not have a headache because in all probability he will not have an opportunity to steer the horse away from the Champion. He doesn’t actually own the horse. Gigginstown are not used to runners in the race but they were always going to run Identity Thief and this horse is potentially in a different league. She has bolted up on a much quicker track than Cheltenham. There would be no reason to even think about stepping her up in trip unless she comes up short at the minimum.
As regards the quality of the race you had virtually the best from both the Triumph and the Fred Winter. I would suggest you couldn’t have got a much stronger renewal. To suggest otherwise because the race produced a wide margin winner in a relatively slow time compared to renewals on different ground borders on the ludicrous.
I have to agree with most of the posters, I thought it was a spectacular performance.
The RUK team immediately all said everything in the race had run below par apart from her, which would be unusual in the extreme for such a race.
She may not turn out to be 41 lengths better than Ivanovich, but she’s clearly very smart and on the up. I certainly wouldn’t crab Apple’s.
Mike
Listening to the o Learys any time one of them talked about identity thief or tombstone, it’s clear that they don’t actually care about hurdling, and particularly 2 mile hurdling. Their aim is to win 3 mile grade one chases, or big handicap chases. They don’t care about anything else, so if Apple’s jade is not going to make a chaser then id say the o learys dont care what Mullins wants do with her.
… they don’t actually care about hurdling, and particularly 2 mile hurdling. Their aim is to win 3 mile grade one chases, or big handicap chases.
They’ve probably never had anything as good as her over two miles, though. I’m sure that if she is kept to the minimum trip and goes unbeaten between now and next March they’ll be pressing Mullins to go for the Champion Hurdle.
On a separate note she looks unlikely to stay three miles, both on breeding (she’s out of a Nikos mare) and on her running style.
Looking back through the winning times for this race, 4m 16.5s looks desperately slow.
According to the RP the race “had an additional 84yds added to the advertised distance” as did the NH Flat race.
Apple’s Jade’s time was faster than the NH Flat.
Mike
Looking back through the winning times for this race, 4m 16.5s looks desperately slow.
According to the RP the race “had an additional 84yds added to the advertised distance” as did the NH Flat race.
Apple’s Jade’s time was faster than the NH Flat.
Mike
Thanks for that Mike, I didn’t realise they were prone to altering the distance. The process makes it rather pointless comparing the times from previous years.
We will see how Apples Jade pans out in the fullness of time.
Stilvi states that the best of the Triumph and Fred Winter were here. Yes, that is true but it doesn’t mean that either race was good at Cheltenham. These 4yo batches vary in quality from year to year. In any case we see different results at Aintree compared to Cheltenham every year.
This is made more likely with ground changes and we knew the O’Brien horse was using the soft ground as the excuse when he flopped before.
The Wexford Man says there is no reason to believe that Diego Du Charmil didn’t run to his mark but we don’t know what his par performance would be on this type of ground because it is not the ground he earned his 140 mark on. It is perfectly possible that he may turn out always to run better on faster going.
I’ve given my opinion and we will see in due course what was ludicrous and what was not.
Thanks for the good crack. Time for me to move on. Be lucky.
Well last year’s triumph was way overrated and I think we are in the habit currently of rating 4 year olds too highly anyway, peace and co was a perfect example of this, he was no where near the rating given to him, neither for that matter was top notch or hargam when compared to other older horses with the same rating. I would suggest that as a whole 4 year olds are rated too highly, but as a 4 year old performance and complete decimation of a decent field goes, that is the best I have ever seen. Even if the best all the others ran to is 120, it was still a 160 performance without leaving the bridle. But as we are taking about 5 of the best 4 year olds, it’s statistically highly likely that a few of them ran above 130, yet they were beaten by between 40 and 50 lengths. The other thing is that the ground in Cheltenham was good, whereas here it was soft, ivanovic must be either an absolute dog once conditions aren’t perfect or he was just hammered by a truely exceptional performance.
Don’t get carried away, the clock didn’t show that the time was that special.
The speed figure she earned from me of 125 was an average Triumph Hurdle figure.Going allowance -0.69s/f (soft)
Aintree
07-Apr-16
01:40 Arzal 2m4f 129
02:15 Apple´s Jade 2m1f 125
02:50 Cue Card 3m1f 109
03:25 Annie Power 2m4f 123
04:05 On The Fringe 2m5f 108
04:40 Katachenko 2m 104
05:15 Kayf Grace 2m1f 91Mike.
The Racing Post have rated Apples Jade 164, which is 2lbs higher than Annie Power’s official mark of 162 for winning the Champion Hurdle.
People can make whatever they wish of the logic of these ratings. My own preference is to take 41 length winning margins with caution when applying them literally.
Thanks for the good crack. Time for me to move on. Be lucky.
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