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This is just something I have always found a little odd. It’s obvious that many good hurdlers don’t make good chasers, and that there are plenty of great chasers that can make lengths over fences making their jumping ability more rewarded as chasers than hurdlers. But…
There is another group, good chasers that are bad hurdlers, I just had a little look at Total Recall and it brought this back to the fore in my mind, and I know chase and hurdle ratings don’t go off the same scale and translate perfectly, but generally they’re fairly close.
Total Recall is a bad example as his chase rating has shot up recently and his hurdle rating was obviously too low, but it was a reminder, his chase rating 147, and hurdle rating 125. I noticed this with a few horses, off the top of my head the one that I remember is Foxrock, the 160 chaser with a 128 hurdle rating, a 128 rating he has ran off and lost convincingly a couple of times.
Can many people think of similar or more extreme examples and speculate as to why a good chaser may be a poor hurdler. All I can think is that some horses may get a big adrenaline kick from tackling more challenging and scary obstacles and that wakes them up and gets them to run better
Sprinter Sacre’s hurdle rating was 149 compared to his 188 rating over fences.
However he only ran as novice over hurdles and who knows what might have been. I just wanted to point out the 40 lbs difference.In either discipline it’s unusual to see a truly accomplished performer. I’d say a good fencer is more common than a good hurdler. Priority for chasing imo is safety while the priority for hurdling is speed across the obstacle. Buveur D’Air is a fine hurdler and his style – flat-backed and low says it all about why he’d never has been as effective over fences.
Make a Stand was a superb hurdler (it’ll be interesting to see if Buveur D’Air can hurdle at the speed that one did). In a way it’s not the actual jumping that’s important over hurdles; like human hurdlers, it’s to do with how quickly you can get your feet back on the ground to keep propelling yourself. Buveur D’Air has proved excellent at that in this soft ground – rather than stretching out over the hurdle, he kind of folds his legs under him in an almost mechanical movement as he meets the hurdle, then they shoot back down and he’s galloping again. Such technique makes a huge difference I think, especially in energy conservation, and I’d bet that a few of his victims would beat him in a flat race.
That’s an interesting viewpoint, I’ve never considered hurdling a massively important aspect, as long as the horse jumps straight and doesn’t keep pecking on landing or hitting the hurdle I tick them off as fine and pretty much ignore it, I guess that’s wrong.
Also I suppose it shouldn’t be thought about as a horse losing a length when slow over a hurdle and more in terms of the energy lost getting back up to speed and catching up being the real killer. I guess I always just thought how can 8 little obstacles make a 20 odd lengths difference for a half decent chaser, if they can jump 4.5ft they must be fine over 3.5. Foxrock was a 158 improving chaser running in a handicap hurdle off 128, 8/1, easy money I thought, he came 8th.
Another factor might be some good chasers lack of respect for hurdles. Desert Orchid comes to mind, iirc he had a fair few falls over hurdles because he didn’t really respect them and got them wrong as a consequence. RP doesn’t show it, but I suspect his hurdle rating would be lower than his chase since he fell more often in hurdle races than chase ones.
There’s also the possible difference in the speed the races are run at. Most hurdles are 2 or 2 and a quarter miles long while many chases are 2 and a half to 3. A good 3 mile chaser may simply not be able to make up the difference in a faster run 2 and a quarter mile hurdle.
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