Watch & Learn: Timefigure analysis from Graeme North | Flat out

At last! No, not the live draw for the jockey draft in the Racing League, not World Cup night in Dubai to which the wider racing public seems increasingly and perhaps understandably indifferent and certainly not the ongoing battle for the National Hunt trainers’ championship.

The real highlight of the last week was the return of the domestic turf season shared between the Lincoln meeting at Doncaster and the Queen’s Prize fixture at Kempton, which those with long memories will remember was also held on turf until 2005 after which it was moved to the Kempton’s all-weather track. And as if to say ‘move over, your time is up’ to the National Hunt game after yet another week of desperately small field sizes and uncompetitive and uninteresting racing, both meetings started with firework performances from the opening winners to underline the fact the real action is back.

The first of those performances came on the SBK-sponsored card at Doncaster where Persian Force ran out one of the most impressive winners seen in years in the traditional two-year-old season opener, the Brocklesby.

At €225,000 as a yearling, Persian Force was by far the most expensive purchase in a field that featured a fair few very cheap purchases and the full-brother to the 2021 Super Sprint winner Gubbass was the horse that leapt out off the page beforehand on Timeform’s predicted ratings which calculate an ‘expected’ rating the horse is considered capable of achieving on its debut that incorporates pedigree, sales price, foaling date and early-season trainer form, among other myriad factors.

Not only did Persian Force run to the highest Timeform performance rating in the race this century – 100p – but his accompanying 97 timefigure (which can be upgraded by a minimum of 3lb given he took some of his final two-furlong sectional easy) was 4lb better than the next best timefigure posted by subsequent Middle Park winner The Last Lion in 2016. His sub-minute winning time was also the fastest this century.

Horses who post very fast timefigures on debut haven’t always gone on to reach the heights that first might have suggested – Eye Of Heaven and Visinari are two particularly good (or painful, depending upon your experience) examples in recent years - but Persian Force’s trainer Richard Hannon has a particularly good record with such types.

Three of his runners besides Persian Force have run to a timefigure 97 or higher first time out since he took over the license in his own name and all won at a good level subsequently, with Log Out Island in 2015 going on to finish second in the Norfolk Stakes before winning the Redcar Two-Year-old Trophy, Raymond Tusk landing an Italian Group 2 in 2018 and Threat winning the Gimcrack and Champagne Stakes in 2019.

The odds are that Persian Force is a Group-level two-year-old and I’d expect him to figure prominently at Royal Ascot whatever opposition comes out between now and then. Mention of Raymond Tusk and The Last Lion is a timely reminder that some horses are near-permanent fixtures at this time of year. Both had contrasting fortunes at the weekend, however, with Raymond Tusk landing a conditions race at Doncaster in a smart 108 timefigure to put a less-than-inspiring hurdles campaign behind him, while The Last Lion unfortunately met with an untimely end at Kempton.

15 minutes after Persian Force had blitzed his rivals at Doncaster, Aldous Huxley provided an insight into the future with a demolition job of 11 rivals in a novice event in which several of the runners had already shown fair form.

None could get within six-and-a-half lengths of him, however, with the third horse another five-and-a-half lengths back and a winning time just under 0.4 seconds slower than the following Listed Magnolia Stakes won by 107-rated Living Legend (who was carrying 5lb less), translates into a very smart 98 debut timefigure.

By Dubawi, who had more individual horses rated 100 or higher by Timeform in 2022 than any other sire out of a ten-furlong winning mare who has already produced a good horse who stays a mile and a half, Aldous Huxley is surely on a Derby trail of some sort after this, though I’d have a slight concern about Epsom being a suitable course for him given he showed more than a bit of knee action.

Start of the turf it might have been, but the Flat racing at Kempton was of a decent quality and the outstanding domestic timefigure of the weekend came later on in the card in the six-furlong handicap which went to the seasoned campaigner Ejtilaab in very one-sided fashion and a timefigure of 114.

If he had younger legs and a less exposed profile, that sort of performance might lead me to think that he’s a potential player in pattern races sooner rather than later, but race fit from Dubai, he almost certainly had things fall exactly right on the day and whether he’s any better than a top-end handicapper remains to be seen.

Back at Doncaster, two winning horses besides Raymond Tusk and Persian Force that showed up well from a time perspective were Volatile Analyst in the Cammidge Trophy and Johan in the Lincoln.

Volatile Analyst ran a 97 in defeating Diligent Harry by a head, but as it often does due to its place in the calendar, the contest will probably end up worth less than the sum of its parts with a couple of the more fancied runners seeming to need the run and the winner a decent handicapper who ended up in the right race at the right time.

Johan took the Lincoln in a timefigure of 95, well below the likes of the 115 recorded by Penitent in 2010 or 114 by Sweet Lightening and Gabrial in recent years, though it always promised to be a less competitive race than usual once horses rated 87 officially had got into the race for the first time in many years, and the consolation Spring Mile unbelievably ended up with just nine runners with the top weight running off a mark of 85, 5lb lower than in any year since 2012.

The Lincoln was also framed by a prominent position and a low draw, so in the circumstances the very progressive Rogue Bear, who was held up right out the back early from stall 19 but ran the fastest final two furlongs according to Timeform’s sectionals (and also the fastest third-last and fourth-last individual furlongs according to data returned by Course Track data), emerges with plenty of credit and will take plenty of beating in the Spring Mile at Newbury if he heads there.

High-class miler Chindit was the best horse on show on the card but not unexpectedly the four-runner Doncaster Mile he won developed into a tactical affair and a timefigure of 79, and an in-running high of 3.79, suggest this was harder work than pre-race odds of 8/13 odds about last year’s Greenham winner suggested it would be.

There might not have been any Classic winners on show at Doncaster but over at the Curragh last season’s 1000 Guineas heroine Mother Earth got her season off to a winning start with a defeat of useful five-year-old Insinuendo in the Park Express Stakes, the first pattern race of the season in Ireland.

Timefigures weren’t straightforward to return on the afternoon despite all races being run at a mile or less, with the ground seeming to speed up as the meeting wore on, but the Park Express was a scrappy affair anyway that was hers to lose. She never really looked like getting caught out, emerging with a much better upgrade than the runner-up on count of coming from much further back, and this ought to have put her straight for some stiffer tasks ahead.

I’ve already mentioned Rogue Bear as one to monitor going forward, but I’d also give another chance to Lord Vader who was second behind My Dubawi at Kempton on Saturday.

Still holding an entry in the 2000 Guineas yet 4lb out of the handicap here, he ended up being caught flat footed like most of the field as the dictating winner pinched a length or so in the penultimate furlong, but he finished strongly as his pedigree (by Ulysees out of a half-sister to a German Derby winner) suggests and he’ll leave this form well behind stepped up to a mile or mile-and-a quarter or when getting a stronger gallop to aim at.

His new mark (76) is the one he raced off on Saturday and he’s one to stick in the proverbial notebook [My Stable].

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