Watch And Learn: Graeme North timefigure analysis

Skelton army marches on

Judging by comments on social media the running and riding of some of his inexperienced horses this season hasn’t made Dan Skelton everyone’s cup of tea but there’s no doubt he’s gunning to be top jumps trainer (decided by prize money won) for the first time and given the ammunition he has at his disposal this time around - boosted by a couple of high-profile acquisitions from the Suede and Munir dispersal sale on Monday – on top of the fact Willie Mullins is without two of his potentially big earners State Man (for the season) and Galopin Des Champs (likely to miss the John Durkan), then it’s hardly surprising that he’s odds on favourite with his odds shortening by the week.

Looking at only those races worth £30,000 or more to the winner since the latest jumps season started in earnest at Chepstow last month, Skelton has won five of the 23 such contests, one more than his old boss Paul Nicholls whose second spot in this hierarchy might come as some surprise to those of the opinion that he doesn’t have the firepower any more.

Nicholls’ four winners have come from 12 runners – Skelton’s from 28 which suggests that the shaky strength in depth that led to his championship bid last year fizzling out late on, isn't present this time around.

One trainer yet to get on the scoresheet in that particular subset of the trainers championship is Nicky Henderson whose six runners have yielded just one second place, and a very lucky one in that given Jonbon would surely have finished a distant third to L’Eau Du Sud in the Shloer Chase, a race he had won in both 2023 and 2024, at Cheltenham last Friday had Matata not clouted the last.

It was the first time that Jonbon, whose stable are reportedly about two weeks behind where they would usually expect to be and who has had a wind operation since his defeat in the Celebration Chase at Sandown in April, has been beaten on his seasonal reappearance, though perhaps not surprising at a track he doesn’t tend to produce his best form at given the race was also run at a strong end-to-end gallop in conditions much more testing than he is used to running on after heavy rain.

Being well below his best in this event in 2024 didn’t stop him going on to win the Tingle Creek at Sandown for the second successive year, however, and presumably he’ll head there again where he’ll no doubt clash again with L’Eau Du Sud who won the Henry VIII Novices’ Chase on the same card as the Tingle Creek last year but in a slower timefigure (149 compared to 166) but who has improved considerably since, posting a 156 in the Arkle having gone odds on in running before running a clear career best 165 here.

The Shloer was one of three Graded contests on Friday’s card and was run in markedly better conditions than the following Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle (more traditionally known as the Hyde) whose ordinary finishing time was exaggerated by deteriorating conditions.

Contested by several horses with good form in Irish points, it was won by one by one, No Drama This End, who had won his point here at Badbury Rings and had run out an impressive winner of a bumper at Warwick before finishing ninth in the Cheltenham Festival contest.

Thrown straight in at the deep end on his hurdles debut, No Drama This End could be named the winner some way out and looked to me value for plenty more than the three lengths he had in hand of Champion Bumper runner-up Heads Up who kept on to deny likely three-miler King’s Bucks third place with his winning timefigure coming in at 122.

Last year’s winner Potters Charm went on to win the Grade 1 Formby Hurdle (formerly the Challow) at Aintree on Boxing Day before coming up short in the Baring Bingham and No Drama This End has achieved at least as much on the clock already as that one had at the same stage, so the omens are good.

Novices to note and stars of the show

Wade Out won the listed novices chase under an inspirational ride from Sean Bowen, though a 122 timefigure in very gruelling conditions in a race he didn’t look like winning for much of the way, suggest this is potentially misleading form.

Saturday’s card of a three-day meeting that would surely work better as two, opened with the usually-significant JCB Triumph Hurdle Trial and saw the unbeaten One Horse Town retain his unbeaten record at the expense of French import Precious Man who looked dangerous coming to the last but didn’t jump it as well as the winner and couldn’t close the gap thereafter at the end of an ordinarily-run race (timefigure 100).

July Flower posted a smart 146 when fending off the Skelton’s Be Aware (151, conceded 7lb) in the Paddy Power Arkle trial which was a higher figure than the one credited Panic Attack (143) in the day’s feature event, an unusually low-quality Paddy Power Gold Cup in which the top weight ran off an official BHA rating of 145 this year, whereas Protektorat headed the weights on 167 last year and four other horses ran off 152 or higher.

Four handicaps, a maiden hurdle and a bumper is poor fare for the country’s leading steeplechasing venue on a Sunday and the highlight, the Greatwood Hurdle, went to the highly progressive Alexei who continued Joe Tizzard’s good spell with a clear-cut win against a big field of mostly exposed and reappearing hurdlers in a 144 timefigure.

Across in Ireland, where there isn’t much jumps racing scheduled at this time of year, the focus at Navan was on the beginners chase where Final Demand, who was beaten five-and-a-half lengths by The New Lion in the latest Baring Bingham, made a successful chasing debut.

Given nothing that faced him was anywhere as near as good as he was over hurdles (the runner-up Wingman couldn’t get within twelve lengths of him at the Dublin Racing Festival) and he was allowed an uncontested lead - his winning timefigure was just 116 – then it was a perfectly satisfactory chasing debut.

Difference of opinion

As someone who churns out two columns a week in the height of summer it probably doesn’t come as a surprise that I try and keep up with the opposition so to speak and one of the more recently available columns I usually try and keep abreast of is The Form Hacker which appears in the Racing Post and is written by my former Timeform colleague Keith Melrose.

While six winners from a small list of trainers to follow who saddled runners at Cheltenham’s Paddy Power meeting suggests there is enough merit in his recently introduced ‘percentiles metric’, an attempt to eke out statistically significant data, to be worth monitoring, I’m not sure I agree with the assertion made in the same column that the sectionals returned by the two winners of the divided maiden hurdle at Gowran Park earlier this month suggested that the faster finishing Maverick Mack consequently did much better than Chase The Moon despite the pair returning similar overall times.

After all, a fast finish is usually indicative of a slow early section and vice versa; had the pair recorded similar times to three furlongs out and then Maverick Man had run the final section four seconds faster, well that would have been different.

Indeed, not only did Chase The Moon run the first mile five seconds faster than Maverick Man, he also covered the important next half mile (which is all uphill at Gowran) getting on for a second quicker too.

As I’ve alluded to before, times aren’t the be all and end all of form analysis in maiden and novice hurdles; point to point form is often no less important. Both Maverick Mack and Chase The Moon had come out of the Irish pointing field, Maverick Man finishing second in late April while Chase The Moon would have finished second had he not fallen at the final fence the previous month.

Both deserve for now the small ‘p’ Timeform have attached to their ratings but ratings I’ve got from those points suggest that Chase The Moon achieved a lot more in his race than Maverick Mack did so it will be interesting to see how their careers pan out this year.

Another column which provided some food for thought over the weekend was Matt Tombs’ Cheltenham Trials Trail which pointed out that there is much more jumping early on in two-mile contests on the Old Course at Cheltenham than at other Grade One tracks, so not allowing horses to work their way into a jumping rhythm.

I’ve not delved into this topic too closely, but it always struck me that the reason Chacun Pour Soi came up short in his championship races over here was not because he was a poor traveller as some had it but because he wasn’t faced with the same rat-a-tat-tat fences in quick succession in Ireland that he was at Cheltenham and Sandown.

Whatever you make of the overall times recoded by Maverick Mack and Chase The Moon, the fact is that there is now a wealth of detailed timing data available over jumps which promises to elevate analysis of the winter game when it is used properly.

Timeform are currently in the process of refining their Flat sectional model to incorporate the greater amount of information that can be garnered from manual sectionals taken from one sectional point where camera work allows, and a similar model will no doubt follow over jumps (Timeform used to produce sectionals over jumps but the project was dropped because of data gathering issues) using the same or very similar methodology.

Two significant novice hurdle winners

Early testing suggests the jumps model will be no less informative than the Flat one when overall times mask the full story and two novices who emerge well from events last week are Mydaddypaddy and Country Code.

Mydaddypaddy has already had plenty written about him and his position at the head of the betting for the 2026 Sky Bet Supreme Novices’ Hurdle – 8/1 if you are interested – but what the sectionals, and provisional sectional upgrades awarded on the back of them, did suggest at Carlisle is that while there will be other horses coming out in the next month or so whose credentials for that race will be at least as strong – Bambino Fever, for one – his performance at Carlisle suggested that he’s not likely to be out of place in that race.

Timeform awarded him an ordinary 107 timefigure for that effort, but provisional upgrades from both four and two furlongs out arguably elevate that effort to as high as 140.

In itself that wouldn’t be good enough to finish in the first four in the Supreme - 143 has been needed in each of the last two years - but he was never stronger than at the finish without coming under any pressure and looks a smart prospect.

Not quite so promising but off to a good start too is Ruth Jefferson’s Country Code, who was placed in both his starts in Irish points. He turned up in a maiden at Newcastle last week and ended up being backed into favouritism in a race that hasn’t taken much winning in recent years, but he looks the exception to the rule to me, quickening up smartly at the end of an ordinarily-run race to post an overall timerating that could arguably be as high as 124 using a combination of his finishing times from two furlongs out and four furlongs out.

The runner-up Lewisham Grove, who pulled 12 lengths clear of the third, had previously finished second to another smart recruit from the Irish point field, Home Town Hero, in a maiden at Uttoxeter and Country Code could well develop into one of the top novices in the North.

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