Graeme North explains his rationale for assigning ratings to Irish point-to-pointers and he shares his wisdom in a P2P special.
‘Quickest time of the day? It’s three miles around a farmer’s field. We’re reaching the tallest dwarf territory.’ That was one of the less complimentary responses on an entertaining thread initiated by Johhny Dineen on Racing Twitter last week ahead of Cristal D’Estruval’s debut in a maiden hurdle at Warwick that had Dineen questioning the £400,000 paid for him after he had won a point at Lisronagh in Tipperary in February.
As it turned out, Cristal D’Estruval made his first start under Rules a winning one in what looked a warm race, sent straight to the front, hurdling fluently, and then finding plenty when challenged early in the straight by the odds-on favourite Baron Noir, who’d last been seen winning a bumper at the Punchestown Festival when putting up one of the best performances in that sphere last season, with fellow impressive bumper winners Bossman Jack and Loaded and Locked, himself an Irish point winner last season, back in third and fourth.
Dineen himself seemed taken by his winning effort, or at least I think he was in a rather contradictory set of posts, remarking that ‘you couldn’t knock that effort’ only later to add ‘saying that it’s got the run of the race in a 2 horse race’ but it served to get his followers talking about the worthiness or otherwise of Irish point to point form.
How reliant British jump racing is on the Irish pointing field is can be seen from the declarations at the two jumps meetings scheduled on the day this column was written, Wednesday November 26, with two run-of-the-mill meetings at Market Rasen and Wetherby attracting between them 39 former Irish pointers (there was also a former Irish pointer declared at Dundalk).
I know this because that information is flagged up, along with the races in which they are declared to run, in a section on the excellent P2P.ie website where you find all this information in a section called ‘Daily Pointers’ as well as research results, view upcoming entries, look up statistics, read a Timeform-style analysis of all the most eye-catching performances in each race and, most importantly of all, for a small subscription, watch partial replays of races, usually the final circuit or so.
The information available from the day Cristal D’Estruval won his point showed that he ran the fastest time of the day (all races were run over the same trip with the same fence bypassed in all races) by six seconds and he also ran the distance from the third last fence to the final fence faster than all the other winners except Clondaw Park who’d won the opening race on the card, a maiden confined to four-year-old mares and who interestingly is now also in training with Harry Derham.
The P2P analysis noted that Cristal D’Estruval found a way to win against the odds, rallying gamely on the (short) run-in to get the better of No Walkover (who has since joined David Pipe and won his first start here, a bumper, at Chepstow in November) despite making a mess of the final fence. Clearly, a smart performance within his own discipline but how can you contextualise that performance in the wider world of racing under Rules?
Well, it’s not straightforward but it’s possible to arrive at figures that are in the right ballpark. Call me an anorak but my interest in horseracing was stimulated when I was at school by local point-to-points, on which I used to keep a rudimentary handicap of sorts, and I’ve been keeping Irish point ratings (hopefully at a more advanced level) for much of the last decade, led by the reasoning that races contested by amateur riders tend more often than not to be truly run.
I’d encourage anyone to have a go, and I like a method that combines final time, sectional time (as much of the race as camerawork allows, always using the same two measuring points), weight carried, type of race and time of afternoon at which the race is run (as the comparison between Clondaw Park and Cristal D’Estruval suggests, times at meetings run on heavy ground tend to deteriorate through the afternoon and this needs to be accounted for, as does the fact that those races in the ‘shop window’, the four-year-old maidens, tend to be run first on the card).
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For the most part overall time trumps sectional times but in those instances where the sectional is a smaller part of the overall time than normally tends to be the case and one sectional is notably quicker than others on the card (the race at Castletown in which Dan Skelton’s recent Cheltenham scorer Soldier Reeves was a rallying second was one such example from the spring) I’ll be more inclined to pay more attention to the sectional times.
When I’ve calculated ratings for all the winners I’ll then ‘lassoo’ them to the meeting’s reference point which is nearly always the Open contest, and which is invariably contested by horses who have solid form in hunter chases or under Rules and whom the meeting’s ratings can be based around. These ‘pencil figures’ aren’t bombproof but over time they have come to indicate a level I would expect the horse to come somewhere near achieving (or even bettering) once it has been put in training with a professional yard.
For what’s it’s worth, Cristal D’Estuval got a tentative 131 from me in his maiden win, a level that ought to enable Harry Derham to get him to win something better along the road to the spring Festivals. He was one of 14 winners I had pencilled in at 130 or higher from last season’s points, with the others including recent Albert Bartlett third King’s Bucks (135, it’s too much work compiling ratings for British points but I suspect Paul Nicholls’ No Drama This End who won that race would have scored highly too on his Badbury Rings win), Lucinda Russell’s Cheltenham winner Conman John (131) and Ben Pauling’s Taurus Bay (133).
Other interesting ones from that select subset still to run but in training are Mossy Fen Coolio (131, withdrawn at Aintree for the O’Neill’s recently) as well as his stablemate Largy Go (140) while two that re with Paul Nicholls are Surburban Legend (135) and Park Blue (132). The best hunter chasers will usually get a 130 maximum.
Recent recruits from last season’s Irish handicaps ranks who have already been successful in the point field this season include the The Goffer and Chemical Energy, but as ever the interesting ones are those that have shown up well in maidens and several were showcased at Cheltenham’s recent sale of point-to-pointers which produced a record set of results.
Whether that will translate into success on the track remains to be seen, and it’s fair comment too that plenty of the best prospects in Ireland change hands privately, but the horse who topped the sale costing £370,000 and keeping an eye out for is Dawn Of Light who not only has some very good form in the book already, getting a provisional 138 from me after winning a four-year-old mares maiden at Quakerstown earlier this month in easily the fastest time of the day having made all, but the pedigree too being a half-sister to the top-class chaser Bravemansgame.
She’ll be in training in Ireland somewhere, reportedly, as will £280,000 purchase Soul Asylum who has gone to Gordon Elliot’s yard after catching the eye when finishing second to Red Acres Max at Dromahane in a four-year-old maiden, making Arazi-like progress around runners from the rear of the field only to get brought almost to a standstill at the final fence after which he rallied but nearly got up, a race whose finishing sectional as I measured it was the fastest of the day and I thought was worth 125.
Stick To The Board, who was the horse that hampered Soul Asylum when falling at the last was sold for £215,000 to join Paul Nicholls while others that fared well on my figures and will soon be racing over here are Loch Ness Pineau (124) who was sold for £100,000 and will join Ben Pauling, Eskylady (126) who went for £260,000 and will join Mickey Bowen and Finisk Pride (120+, has joined Lucinda Russell) who won his maiden in a time ten seconds faster than the average for the meeting as well as posting a sectional almost two and a half seconds faster than average.
Others worth noting are Nikolavs Otto and Jardin De Tunis who didn’t return quite such good figures but still fetched £130,000 and £210,000 to go to Dan Skelton and Lucinda Russell respectively. Longer-term prospects or not, there should be races to be won with all of them, and it will be fascinating to see how they get on when they set foot on the track.
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