East India Dock may not be ante-post favourite for the Triumph Hurdle but he is very much the one to beat on Timeform ratings.
East India Dock took his Timeform rating to 147p (from 144p) with a ten-length win in the Triumph Hurdle Trial at Cheltenham on Saturday and he is now 11 lb clear of the next highest-rated juvenile in Britain or Ireland, Hello Neighbour (136p).
Ante-post Triumph Hurdle favourite Lulamba is rated 129P following his comfortable victory at Ascot on his first start for Nicky Henderson, with the Large P indicating he's capable of much better form. However, East India Dock sets a high standard on form and is already rated higher than a typical winner of the Triumph Hurdle. The average Timeform performance rating of a Triumph Hurdle winner in the last ten years is around 145.
Timeform handicapper Martin Rigg said: "East India Dock cemented his position - above even Lulamba on the formbook - as the one to beat in the Triumph Hurdle with a dominant performance, again impressing with his fast, fluent jumping.
"In following up his win in a similar event at the November meeting, he again ran to a high level for a juvenile and is already of a standard good enough to win a slightly above-average edition of the Triumph."
The other key performance at Cheltenham from a ratings perspective was delivered in the concluding Grade 2 novice hurdle by Sixmilebridge (141p from 123p).
Sixmilebridge was taking a marked step up in class after winning a maiden hurdle at Leicester and a novice hurdle at Huntingdon, but he showed much-improved form to inflict a first defeat on Potters Charm who was a bit below his best. Sixmilebridge's Timeform rating of 141p has been bettered by only Romeo Coolio (150p), The Yellow Clay (147p) and The New Lion (143P) in the novice hurdle division this season.
Dancing City (147p from 142p) took a step forward on the form he had shown on his chasing debut to win a Grade 3 at Naas on Sunday. He was favoured by the terms of that contest, up against penalised main market rival Biolumninescence, but showed his stamina to assert up the run-in and he remains with the potential to do better when it's required. The highest-rated novice chaser so far this season is Sir Gino (159P), while the highest-rated novice chaser likely to end up against Dancing City in the staying division is Ballyburn (154p).
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