Course Specialism.

[dwl]

Hello all,

I’m having a think about course-specialism. Any thoughts as to which UK National Hunt course lends itself most to course-specialism (among horses and jockeys)?

Cheltenham is obviously the most high-profile but can anybody oppose this with an alternative suggestion?

Thanks!

[Gazs Way De Solzen]

I always find the term ‘course specialist’ not as straight forward as it may seem.

If you have a horse that is local to a track where the trainer has his/her string, then it may be fact that they wish to enter the horses at that track, for potential winning opportunites, however, is convenient as it is close, therefore less transport.

Horse then racks up ‘x’ amounts of runs at that track, and ‘y’ amount of wins from those runs. If the horse is very successful during those runs, he/she is then often regarded as a ‘course specialist’, when in reality, it may not be a result of liking the course.

No doubt there are horses that go better left/right handed, and prefer either undulations or a flatter track, however, if a horse has 11 runs at one course, and 3 at another, and is more successful at the former, then it is fairly obvious that they are going to be labelled a ‘course specialist’, when in reality, there have been fewer opportunities at opposing locations.

[Coggy]

I think that Cartmel may be an idiosyncratic type of track that may lend itself to specialists. It is a tight track where horses are regularly on the turn, the fences / hurdles are quite close together, and there is a very long period at the end on the flat

[graysonscolumn]

Again probably mostly by virtue of its tightness, Fakenham seems to attract its share of specialists. And not just those from the immediate vicinity, either, as the exploits of the recently retired and very wonderful Cool Roxy remind us.

I suspect the general numeric paucity of competition (it has the lowest stabling allocation in the country at 70 boxes but can’t even meet that most of the time), plus a layout suited to short-runners like few (any?) other, also plays its part in attracting certain repeat visitors. At the same time, though, it always surprises me that its hunter chases, and in particular those at 2m5f, don’t attract close(r) to maximum fields, given how many pointers and hunter chasers have few pretensions of staying 3m around anywhere even halfway tough.

gc

Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.

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