Watch And Learn: Graeme North timefigure analysis

Constitution Hill’s recent win at Southwell, which was analysed at length in this column last week, was a reminder that the new Flat season proper is just around the corner, no bad thing given the miserable quality of some of the action over jumps this last month away from the feature weekend cards.

There wasn’t as much focus or fanfare about Kempton’s card last Wednesday evening as there had been about Constitution Hill’s Flat debut, but one race might prove just as significant going forward and that was the conditions race for three-year-olds over a mile which Godolphin won in 2024 with subsequent 2000 Guineas winner Notable Speech and in 2025 with the equally smart Opera Ballo.

It was chosen this year for the second racecourse appearance of Hidden Force who’d been given a Timeform large P, denoting the likelihood of significant improvement, when making a winning debut at the track in December. Looking at the winning times of the three performances side by side, Opera Ballo was easily the most convincing; not only did he run the fastest time of the three – 98.16 seconds compared to Notable Speech’s 99.23 and Hidden Force’s 99.44 – but that time also converted into the highest timefigure of the three, 105 compared to Hidden Force’s 91 and Notable Speech’s 74 – on top of which he earned a hefty sectional upgrade that clearly marked him out as pattern class.

It’s fair to say the performance that properly earmarked Notable Speech as potentially top class was not his win in February but the one in April that preceded his Guineas victory where he rattled through the last two furlongs in 21.79 seconds, causing Timeform to write in their race report that he was one of the likelier types to pick up the pieces in the Guineas if City of Troy misfired (which he did).

Hidden Force probably hasn’t achieved as much in his wins to this point as that pair had but he’s undoubtedly promising – he is rated 106p – and the horse he had behind in third has already won a pattern race, albeit a minor and quite weak Group 3 at Deauville last August. Looking ahead, it might be, however, that his pedigree - by Frankel out of a mare who has already produced a winner at a mile-and-a-half by Frankel’s own sire Galileo - means he ends up finding a mile too short before long.

Opera Ballo wasn’t in action at Meydan on Saturday as might have been expected having won the Grade 1 Jebel Hatta easily back in January but his stable was well represented and won one of the Grade 2’s, the Dubai City of Gold, with the reliable globetrotter Rebel’s Romance for all they had to play second fiddle on the night to Simon and Ed Crisford who bagged three races including the Al Maktoum Classic with five-length winner Meydaan.

The Crisfords also won the Jumeirah 2000 Guineas with Title Role, a horse who had also broken his maiden at Kempton, in his case last autumn, and who had warned up for this with a win over course and distance in the Guineas Trial in January. The slight disappointment, if that’s the right word, of the contest was Godolphin’s own Talk Of New York, who’d looked a potential top-notcher when leaving his rivals for dead on his Kempton debut last December when his penultimate furlong of 10.92 was the fastest of all at the trip all year by a two-year-old and faster than the same sections in both Opera Ballo’s two wins.

Given the backdrop against which the closed-door meeting took place, however, mindful too of how hard he pulled trying to get settled from the outside stall before being forced very wide of the home turn, it might be prudent to overlook that effort and keep him onside this year, not least given he was the most inexperienced horse in the contest and actually made up his ground early in the straight very takingly.

The fillies equivalent was won by the French-trained Piana, getting up on the rail in a blanket finish at the end of a steadily-run race, quite a surprise given her previous form in two runs at Meydan this year and the fact her only start in listed company in five starts in France last year had seen her finish fifth. Not much to get excited about here.

Magic first significant performance of the week over jumps

121, 121, 112 and 118. Those were the ‘headline’ timefigures from each of the first four day’s jumps meeting last week and it wasn’t until Newbury on Friday that a winner anywhere in the week managed to exceed 130 with Miami Magic returning 138 in the three-mile novice chase. There was plenty to like about his win, but it was hardly unexpected given he had easily the best form in the race and was sent off odds-on in what was effectively quite a drop in grade having last been seen finishing third of four behind Sixmilebridge and Kala Conti in the Scilly Isles Novices’ Chase at Sandown where he ran an almost identical 137. He’s now two from five over fences but his future looks more like it will be in good handicaps than Graded events but only then if he tidies up his jumping which was a bit shoddy at times here.

Guchen took the conditional jockey’s handicap hurdle in a first-time tongue tie by 19 lengths with a much-improved 125, so building on his Kempton win earlier in the month, not that he needed to win by so far with the race in the bag, while the strong-staying Peacenik also took a step forward on the clock when returning a 124 in what looked a strongly-contested staying handicap hurdle, always at the forefront of a strong gallop and seeing things out thoroughly.

There was also a card at Newbury on Saurday (as well as at Doncaster, where they also raced on Friday) but the principal action of the day was at Kelso where the bet355 sponsored card featured the Grade 2 Premier Novices’ Hurdle, the listed Premier Chase and the Morebattle Hurdle which has for a few years now been a handicap.

The Premier Chase might as well have been a veterans event with the youngest of the four runners being eleven, and though the event itself was uncompetitive as the 1/12 starting price of the eventual easy winner Protektorat suggested, the race did at least produce the best winning timefigure (143) of the day over fences though only after the winner survived a shuddering error two out.

The top figure of the day over hurdles was also achieved at Kelso where Montemares clocked 138, 2lb below his Timeform performance rating, when winning the Premier Novices’. With the first two in the market both pulled up, there might be some arguing as to the merit of the form but the time suggests both those horses, Starmount and Le Beau Madrik, would have had to register improved performances to the tune of 5lb each for either to have succeeded and the winner was on an upward curve coming into the race anyway with his fourth place in the Challow when the sole four-year-old in the field suggesting that connections at least were expecting something like this at some point.

The Morebattle went to the novice Captain Hugo in a rather ordinary 124 despite what looked a decent gallop, with the first four coming from midfield or behind.

Down at Newbury, Protektorat’s trainer Dan Skelton also had the chaser top on time over fences, Heltenham, in the grandly-named Betvictor Gold Cup, a handicap for middle-ranking chasers over two-and-a-half miles. He’d won the same race in 2024 off a mark 4lb lower than the 134 he raced off here, but handicap marks in the high 130s or low 140s have always stopped him before and whether he can follow up his 2024 win back here (where he goes well, four wins from six starts) in three weeks’ time as he did in 2024 remains to be seen.

Across at Navan, James du Berlais almost matched Heltenham’s 138, returning a 137 in the Grade 2 Boyle Sports Webster Cup Chase. The outsider of the quartet and dropped out, the gallop was surprisingly strong given the small field but that’s the scenario that suits his style and he finished too strongly in very testing conditions for Better Days Ahead, back over fences for the first time in ten months, with the latter’s stable-companion Found A Fifty beaten around 20 lengths or so for the third race in succession and looking a pale shadow of the horse who beat the reappearing Majborough in a mistake strewn Hilly Way Chase back in November.

Gordon Elliott might have some head scratching to do with Found A Fifty but landed the other Graded race on the card, the Flyingbolt Novice Chase, with Jacob’s Ladder. Successful on his previous start in the listed Barberstown Handicap at the Dublin Racing Festival, he landed his first Graded event (had been second to Kappa Jy Pyke in the Sky Bet Super Sub Novice at Punchestown in January) in 133, though had twice run faster than that over fences previously and is shaping up as though two miles is his best trip, paying compliments in the process to both Romeo Coolio and Irish Panther whose form his ties in closely with.

The next Watch And Learn column will be a review of the Cheltenham Festival; in its place next week will be the first of four daily timefigure previews in search, hopefully, of a tasty-priced winner.

More from Graeme North

• What did Constitution Hill achieve at Southwell?
• Impressive figures at Ascot

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