Watch And Learn: Graeme North timefigure analysis including Betfred Derby contenders

For those readers unaware, last Sunday (May 11) was the 40th anniversary of the Bradford City fire disaster when, on the day the club were supposed to be celebrating winning the Third Division title, 56 supporters, including two from the visiting team Lincoln City, lost their lives and many hundreds more were scarred physically and mentally forever after a small fire that broke out under the main stand (which was made of wood, since banned in stadia construction) took hold so quickly that the whole stand burned down in less than four minutes.

No lives were lost, thankfully, given it happened in the middle of the night and was put down to arson, but 2025 is also the 40th anniversary of the Chester racecourse fire when the old County Stand was destroyed within three hours.

Rebuilding it took over two years and it was reopened officially in May 1988, with meetings in the intervening period continuing with spectators accommodated (uncomfortably, presumably) in temporary viewing facilities (while the main stand at Valley Parade was rebuilt, Bradford had to play their home matches at neighbouring grounds like Elland Road and Odsal, which is better known for Rugby League).

In that rebuilding phase, Chester’s May 1987 meeting even made history when the opening race, the Lily Agnes Stakes became the first race to be beamed into betting shops (albeit only to shops in Bristol and Colchester) as part of the new Satellite Information Service.

40 years on, the Lily Agnes retains its place as Chester’s traditional season curtain raiser but unlike the remainder of the track’s most prestigious meeting, the race is a pale shadow of its former self.

2000 winner Romantic Myth went on and landed the Queen Mary Stakes but since then none of the 15 winners who have gone on to try their luck at Royal Ascot have finished in the first three and nothing since 2001 has finished any closer than fifth. They are statistics that don’t bode well for its latest winner, Ali Shuffle, who might have been completing a hat-trick but still only managed an overall timerating (timefigure and sectionals combined) of 85 which nowadays is ‘also-ran territory’ at Ascot.

Happily, the feature events on the opening day, the Cheshire Oaks and the Chester Vase, have retained their significance as Oaks and Derby pointers and might well, certainly so far as the Vase is concerned, do so again this year given Lambourn is a horse I suspect remains underrated and possibly by some margin too.

Traditional handicapping orthodoxy says that the bare form of his Vase win can’t be rated highly because of proximity in seventh of the outsider Faire La Nouba, who had been beaten off an Irish BHA mark of 56 when last seen, albeit that race had been eight months previously and over a trip half a mile shorter. A relatively ordinary winning timefigure of 94 is testament too to a pace that probably saw Faire La Nouba stay closer up for a long way than he was really entitled to be, but close inspection of the Lambourn’s finishing sectionals, and particularly his final one, suggests that the longer the race went on the increasingly more dominant he became, and quickly too, with his last furlong of all arguably entitling him to a 6lb higher upgrade than runner-up Lazy Griff.

Plenty of observers interpreted his win as a boost for Delacroix who beat him in the Ballysax Stakes at Leopardstown in March, a race that besides Delacroix too has also thrown up subsequent winners Puppet Master and Wemightakedlongway and though I wouldn’t argue with that, I’m also inclined to think it was confirmation that had he not been kept wide all the way before finishing with real purpose as Delacroix dictated on the inside rail, Lambourn have come much further clear of the third for all Delacroix was only being ridden out.

Twice a winner at two when overcoming wide trips at the tightly-turning tracks of Killarney and Craon, the latter after missing the break by four lengths under Christophe Soumillon, before looking to resent blinkers (since left off) at the Curragh, he strikes me as a horse whose form might take a substantial step forward when getting a properly-run mile-and-a-half and a ground-saving ride.

Aidan O’Brien won the Derby in 2013 with Chester Vase winner Ruler Of The World; two of his other Chester Vase winners, Treasure Beach and US Army Ranger, also finished second at Epsom, while 2017 Vase runner-up Wings Of Eagles won at Epsom. I fancy Lambourn will be hard to keep out of the three at Epsom.

The Cheshire Oaks roll of honour isn’t short of Epsom winners this century either, for all the form of the race often looks no better than useful at the time, with Light Shift in 2007 and Enable in 2017 completing the double and 2018 runner-up Forever Together also going on to score.

This year’s renewal saw only one of the seven runners go into the race with a Timeform rating in three figures, that being the Aidan O’Brien representative Minnie Hauk, and she was the only one to achieve that feat in the race itself too as she beat what is almost certainly an ordinary bunch by a length in an underwhelming 77 timefigure that barely makes it into the 80s after upgrades are added.

She was second to the more-experienced Ballysax fifth Wemightakedlongway on her debut at Cork when racing very wide, so I suspect she’s probably a fair bit better than her current rating.

The Dee Stakes hasn’t been won by a subsequent Derby winner since Kris Kin in 2003, though Astrology who scored in 2012 and 2017 winner Cliffs Of Moher both went on to finish placed, but the latest winner Mount Kilimanjaro scored in a 106 timefigure that has only been bettered twice in the last ten runnings but a late-race sectional flourish akin to what his stablemate Lambourn achieved the day before suggests he’s worth more like 113 or thereabouts than the 110 performance rating he was credited with in beating High Stock by a neck.

Out of an American-bred daughter of Galileo who stayed very well, he’ll surely improve a bit more for a step up to a mile-and-a-half though his head carriage and inclination to hang left which has been evident on both starts this season might mean Chantilly and not Epsom is the immediate Derby destination for him, not least since he’s already won going right-handed in France and finished second to stable-companion Twain o his other visit there.

Neither of the Classic trials at Lingfield, the Derby Trial and the Oaks Trial, have proved a prolific source of Epsom winners (two apiece) among those that finished in the first three in those respective races, but the former has come back into fashion of late having been won by Anthony Van Dyck in 2019 and Ambiente Friendly (who went on to finish second at Epsom) last year while runner-up Adayar scored at Epsom in 2021.

The latest winner Puppet Master had shaped well when fourth in the Ballysax and probably stepped up on that form to the tune of 7lb or so here, with a creditable 100 timefigure to match and a 7lb upgrade according to the figures published by Total Performance Data.

That said, having the rail and coming under a stronger finishing drive than the runner-up, stable-companion Stay True, who was having just his second start compared to Puppet Master’s fifth and looked notably inexperienced still, almost certainly tipped the balance in his favour and three months down the line it’s easy to imagine Stay True being comfortably the better of the two horses.

Like Lambourn, Stay True ran three or four wide at Leopardstown before clearing away in impressive fashion in the final furlong on his debut and looks at this stage a very likely type for the Queens Vase, a race his sire Galileo, from whose last crop he is, has sired the winner of six times before including with Illinois (who won the Ormonde Stakes at Chester on Thursday in a 109 timefigure) in 2024.

Giselle had very little to beat in the Oaks Trial but if her trainer Aidan O’Brien was impressed by the turn of foot Delacroix showed in the Deby Trial at Leopardstown the following day, reportedly remarking “he didn’t half quicken”, he must have liked what he saw here as well.

Total Performance Data sectionals show she ran each of the last two furlongs getting on for three lengths quicker than Puppet Master and on the first of her three runs as a two-year-old she’d been unlucky not to beat her stable-companion Bedtime Story who next time out won the Chesham Stakes by nearly ten lengths.

O’Brien saddled three of the five runners in the Cashel Palace Hotel Derby Trial Stakes, though two were thought only to be running for places with Delacroix sent off at 1/3. He brought easily the best form to the table and anyone already on him at fancy prices for the Derby, for which he has now hardened into 4/1, must have been pleased with what they saw, not least the manner in which he put what was a steadily-run race (easily the slowest of the three at the trip on the card) to bed in a matter of strides with his last two-furlong and final-furlong sectionals suggesting he’s worth a combined 105 timerating which is around 8lb better using the same metric as that achieved by the runner-up Purview.

Delacroix might have had seven races, but Timeform has still retained the p on his rating (116) and it’s not hard to see why with neither of the winning rides he’s received this year asking anywhere near the maximum of him.

O’Brien was also responsible for arguably the most promising two-year-old of the week as well, Albert Einstein who had made a winning debut at Naas the previous day.

It says more for the immediate limitations of those who finished 12 lengths (on good ground, too) behind the runner-up Evening Blues than it does for the prospects of the first two given Albert Einstein’s winning timefigure by itself, 84, was unexceptional and limited anyway by two other races run over the same trip on the card, but analysis of sectional data allows that figure to be upgraded and both of his last two individual furlongs as provided by RaceIQ suggest he is worth a 16lb upgrade, compared to Evening Blues’ 4lb, suggesting he was value for more like a four-length win and an overall timerating of 100.

In other words, even without likely improvement, that's top-two Coventry Stakes level in an ordinary year.

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