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Unfortunately Paul Nicholls said the answer was 42 as well, AP, so I fear it may be the correct answer! After all, he would know more about it than some of the best time analysts in the country.
Anyway go read the Racing Post website and see what PN said about the ground…not soft my ar*e!!!
F.ofF
Lesson two: don’t believe everything you read (or hear), least of all from people connected to the horses involved, and develop techniques for making your own informed decisions.
I really should be charging you for this advice, but I’ll give it gratis, seeing as I like you so much.
This is also true……..everyone that was there and every Jockey that was riding and trainer with runner/s who spoke to journalists, TV commentators, Radio Presenters , got together before racing and hatched a master plan Jackanory Jackcnory Jackanory
Behave yourself Pru and go sit in the chair in the corner…..and if you move I’ll get someone to plug it in
Lesson two: don’t believe everything you read (or hear), least of all from people connected to the horses involved, and develop techniques for making your own informed decisions.
I really should be charging you for this advice, but I’ll give it gratis, seeing as I like you so much.
Pru that is really poor advice. Surely it should be -don’t listen to ANYTHING you read or hear least of all from people connected to the horse involved.
FOF
You may be a horseracing genius and I may be "stupid and not have a clue what I’m talking about" but I am learning and when I saw something that didn’t make sense to me at Ascot yesterday I’ve been trying to figure out why. I respect a lot of the opinions on here so I put it up because I wanted to get some other ideas or answers to something that puzzles me.
The winning times and and how they compare to the official going reports in my earlier post are taken from the official formbook. The times from the races yesterday in comparison suggest the ground was riding faster than officially reported. As for distances I didn’t see any false rails but the exact location of the starts compared to normal is unknown to me.
From a form point of view I will concede Labelthou does appear best on a soft surface however using RP ratings as a guide, Lough Derg, Tamarinbleu, Wee Robbie have all recorded their best ratings on GF, GD, GS respectively and Patricksnineteenth the beaten favourite in the 3.30 has shown its best form on soft. Their was too much unexposed form in the other races for me to form a firm conclusion about going requirements.
Its also interesting that only 1 favourite won at Ascot yesterday when the strike rate for all clear National Hunt favourites since the course reopened has been 40%.
Another striking stat from Ascot since it reopened – All horses running in a graded / listed chase or hurdle at any course except Ascot, who ran at Ascot last time out have a 4.69% strike rate, only 6 winners from 128 runners (Vodka Bleu, Shatabdi, Natal, Moon Over Miami, Blazing Bailey, Amaretto Rose).
The shape of the races at Ascot feels all wrong.
Maybe most importantly I’ve had a gut feeling for sometime there is something "not quite right with Ascot" since it reopened, something I can’t explain.
FOF
The shape of the races at Ascot feels all wrong.
Maybe most importantly I’ve had a gut feeling for sometime there is something "not quite right with Ascot" since it reopened, something I can’t explain.
Totally agree with that.
I don’t know how or why but there’s something that just doesn’t feel right about the new Ascot its not like other courses at all. There are too many things that just don’t make sense.
If you looked at the results of some of yesterdays races without knowing what trip they were run at you would have sworn they were over different trips to what they were.
Got me beat, I admit.
Yesterday’s Victor Chandler was won by a front runner better suited to trips in excess of twenty furlongs, in a time almost identical to that posted by Bleu Superbe earlier in the season on good-to-firm ground. The going on Saturday was certainly nothing close to good let alone good-to-firm, but even the relative class of the horses involved can’t account for those sort of times, can it?
Ascot…the equine Bermuda Triangle.
I think you are all right (or should that be wrong).
The times brigade are right, it is impossible to do those sought of times on Soft, Heavy in places.
However, the way they were finishing and the fact it was comparative stayers at the particular distances winning. Leads me to suggest the going (although not Soft, Heavy in places (as we know it), was acting as if it was extremely testing. With some able to handle it, some not (whatever their previous going requirements might have been).
Were they getting through the ground at a faster pace because it was a newish course / ground, not compacted as much may be.
So I ask again.
Should there be another going description of tacky or holding? None of the existing going reports used seem to fit.
Value Is EverythingPossibly, but I don’t think so. The degree to which horses are slowed down by the ground can be measured to a high degree of accuracy through retrospective time analysis. The composition of the ground can be measured to some degree of accuracy by the going stick. Both are expressed on a far more sensitive and useful scale than conventional means of describing going. Ground descriptions that ignore times and/or going-stick readings are too subjective already, and we don’t need another fudged and ill-defined category to add to the others. IMO.
I cannot help feeling that the answer lies in the soil. When they re-vamped Ascot, I believe some track changes were made; don’t know what; don’t know how, but things seem different.
Certainly, the ground looked very wet, from the few pictures I saw on terrestial TV. Your man with the stick had very wet shoes, imo, yet front-running looked to be a fairly successful tactic.
Perhaps, things looked way different from Pat Pong or Pattaya or wherever it is that Fist Fantasy does all his viewing and punting, but, I have to admit that I’m one who has a lot to learn, for,
as soon as I think I have a course weighed up, they rip the thing up and send me scurrying back to the drawing board, to the Table, and all the other seemingly essential aids to punting.Roll on Cheltenham; roll on Chester!
So if it was just genuinely good-soft Prufrock, how do you explain that it was comparative stayers winning most races? Surely on normal good-soft going horses like Tamarinbleu would not be able to outspeed their rivals.
Hang on.
Actually, if it was genuinely good-soft, and it was just loose ground we were seeing (on a new course) being flicked up. May be the jockeys of the hold up horses under estimated the quickness of the surface, going too slow early on. The front runners going the best pace. That might be why (other than Wee Robbie where they did go too fast) the front / prominent runners did so well.Is that what you are saying Prufrock?
Value Is EverythingI don’t think it was "genuinely good to soft". As mentioned previously, I would describe it, based on times, as soft but on the good to soft side (taking a horse rated approximately 220 to equal standard carrying wfa in a truly run race, fwiw).
Tamarinbleu is not an out-and-out stayer. The fact that he was not only good enough but fast enough to shake up Champion Chase contenders was there for all to see in the Boylesports, in which he got to the third-last significantly quicker than you would expect in a race of that calibre and yet still won off a mark of 150.
He went like a horse that would have little trouble with an extended 2m on a stiff track if plenty of use was again made of him. It was, and he didn’t.
Surely coming up with an accurate timefigure for this race is nigh on impossible, with an omitted fence , parts of the track dolled off, the ground patchy and some dubious other races to compare it with?
Prufrock – I still find your Boylesports sectionals argument rather puzzling. If they went that fast early, why did nothing held up make any ground in the closing stages? Forgetting Tamarinbleu for a second – I find it hard to believe by the same argument that Patman du Charmil is the next coming – decent beast though he is….
A little trick I always use (on viewing replays, of course) when reading the finish of races is to ignore the movements of the jockeys and look at the pace of the horses – and imagine what I would call the pace if they were going past with a circuit to run. The way they were finishing at Ascot yesterday (crawling, in the main) suggested to me that the going was plenty soft enough.
Therefore, I can only conclude as to the (relatively) decent times clocked that the movement of rail to avoid patches of false ground significantly shortened all races, particularly when taken into account alongside missing out the ditch before Swinley Bottom in all chases.
Given the amount of rail movement throughout the winter as courses bid to provide fresh ground and avoid false patches, I really do question the validity of times as a tool in NH race-reading.Nick
Good post, NIck
I tend to agree. Coming up with useful or accurate times is fraught with danger over the sticks. Coming up with useful sectionals sounds like a massive head-busting headache to me – but I’m sure Prufrock will disagree!!
To ONLY way to determine the going is by the race times on the day.
If it wasn’t G/S yesterday at Ascot, what was it?
I cannot have the first sentence in the slightest. What is it about these number crunchers who cannot accept that times may not be the be-all and end-all of everything? I don’t need a stopwatch to tell me what my eyes and experience tell me clear as day.
I was at Ascot yesterday – the ground was horrendous. In answer to your question, I’d say the official going description was about right. There is no way in this world that the going was even close to good to soft – it was very soft and very, very tiring. The horses were crawling on their hands and knees from the final bend, for God’s sake!
FOF
You may be a horseracing genius and I may be "stupid and not have a clue what I’m talking about" but I am learning and when I saw something that didn’t make sense to me at Ascot yesterday I’ve been trying to figure out why. I respect a lot of the opinions on here so I put it up because I wanted to get some other ideas or answers to something that puzzles me.
The winning times and and how they compare to the official going reports in my earlier post are taken from the official formbook. The times from the races yesterday in comparison suggest the ground was riding faster than officially reported. As for distances I didn’t see any false rails but the exact location of the starts compared to normal is unknown to me.
From a form point of view I will concede Labelthou does appear best on a soft surface however using RP ratings as a guide, Lough Derg, Tamarinbleu, Wee Robbie have all recorded their best ratings on GF, GD, GS respectively and Patricksnineteenth the beaten favourite in the 3.30 has shown its best form on soft. Their was too much unexposed form in the other races for me to form a firm conclusion about going requirements.
Its also interesting that only 1 favourite won at Ascot yesterday when the strike rate for all clear National Hunt favourites since the course reopened has been 40%.
Another striking stat from Ascot since it reopened – All horses running in a graded / listed chase or hurdle at any course except Ascot, who ran at Ascot last time out have a 4.69% strike rate, only 6 winners from 128 runners (Vodka Bleu, Shatabdi, Natal, Moon Over Miami, Blazing Bailey, Amaretto Rose).
The shape of the races at Ascot feels all wrong.
Maybe most importantly I’ve had a gut feeling for sometime there is something "not quite right with Ascot" since it reopened, something I can’t explain.
I think your far from stupid. It’s things like what you are doing that helps people discover certain things in racing that gives you that little edge.
This Ascot dilemma could be easily explained by someone but I doubt if we the betting public will ever know without being told the reason.
Although I have been to Ascot several times I can’t say I know the course that well but anything could change times and knock them haywire.
Perhaps there was bad drainage at certain places in the course that rode very heavy in the past and they have now been fixed. You hit a patch of really heavy ground when you are riding you can feel horses gear change underneath you unless he has feet like boats. You would expect the times to be slower if that happened in the same way you would expect them to be faster once taken care off.
I am no time expert I have never used them in my slife except when I conatact a friend who does a different thing with times and that’s very seldom……….maybe I’m a fool for not looking at times but that’s just the way I am. Having ridden horses for many years I know what to look for and without times one glance told me the ground was very soft or heavy.
How soft it actually was is down to opinion. I asked the question and was told it was very soft and holding in places yet Ruby Walsh claims it rode heavy throughout…I wouldn’t argue with that because one was talking the hurdle course the other the chase course.
Overall it’s a way too complicated for me to work out so I am putting it down to some sort of Gremlins in the turf….someone said it could be the soil has changed……….someone call a geologist maybe he knows
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