Graeme North reveals what the clock tells us about the Charlie Hall Chase, in which Shan Blue fell with the race at his mercy, and the Champion Chase won by Frodon.
Back in 2019 when horseracing was suspended for several days ahead of the Cheltenham Festival following an outbreak of equine flu, I got several of my Timeform colleagues to help me start to build a database of obstacle-by-obstacle sectionals at Cheltenham. It perhaps wasn’t the best choice of track, given two separate courses there (ignoring the Cross Country one) and numerous distances meant far more combinations than could be covered meaningfully in the time available, and, in hindsight, I’d have been better directing them to investigate Leicester where the number of individual distances raced at over jumps is the smallest of any course in Britain.
An interesting outcome from the project was that several of my colleagues were surprised that the times they were recording were at odds with the impression they were getting visually, and I was reminded of those observations after the Charlie Hall Chase at Wetherby on Saturday after coming across some comments on social media that suggested Harry Skelton had gone for home too soon on Shan Blue, a move that had possibly contributed to the horse's fall. The idea that Skelton had committed too early is flawed, as it fails to take into account properly events that transpired before he drove Shan Blue past Cyrname on the final bend.
There were three chases on the Charlie Hall card and, unlike 2020 when some deterioration in conditions could explain away some of Cyrname’s modest showing on the clock (the opening race then had been won by a horse rated some 40lb his inferior in a time barely two seconds slower despite carrying more weight), the finishing sectionals on Saturday across both disciplines showed underfoot conditions remained pretty much constant. We can’t draw a meaningful comparison with the only other race run over the Charlie Hall distance, the concluding handicap won by Soyouthinksogain, as that race was run at a dawdle, but we can compare the pace in the Charlie Hall with the earlier handicap won by French import Geryville using the times taken from the first fence in Geryville’s race.
What we would expect to see, if both races had been properly run, is that the Charlie Hall, by dint of being contested by vastly superior horses, ought to have been run a fair bit faster at any point (how much faster would depend on how far the runners had travelled) than the handicap, even though the race was over half a mile further. That’s not what transpired, however. The leader in Geryville’s race got to the final fence on the first circuit 0.5 seconds faster than Cyrname, who was leading Shan Blue at this point when one would have expected Cyrname to have got to that same point (once taking into account difference in ability, weight carried and different distance) more than three seconds faster.
The pace in the Charlie Hall picked up swiftly as the runners went down the far side, so that by the time Cyrname had reached the final fence in the back straight he was around five seconds up on the leader in the handicap but still around three seconds down on what might have been expected given his superior ability. With that ‘sectional reserve’ in his tank, and the other runners out of their ground, Skelton surely did the right thing kicking on when he did, and had he eased off the pedal a little into the third-last Shan Blue might well have run out at least a twenty-length winner (the approximate distance he was ahead of Fusil Raffles when he came down, in itself seven lengths further ahead than he had been four out) whilst recording a timefigure of 155 or thereabouts. My contact at the track reported back that Shan Blue had thrived physically over the summer and now looks a proper chaser, and I don’t doubt he’s much improved.
It will be no surprise to hear in the next few days that Cyrname has been retired, but his trainer Paul Nicholls still has one of his other flag-bearers Frodon going strong and the 2020 King George winner will surely be back at Kempton next month after winning the weekend’s Down Royal feature, the Ladbrokes Champion Chase.
Paul Nicholls remarked afterwards it was probably a career-best effort, and Timefom have him running as well on performance ratings as he ever has, but the clock points to the race being something of a tactical affair in which it might not be wise to take the result at face value. At their best, there’s little between Frodon and Envoi Allen, who won the following Grade 2 conditions chase, and given they were carrying pretty much the same weight and both won their races from the front it is relatively easy to compare them through the race - even though Envoi Allen’s race was run officially over nearly four and a half furlongs shorter - by adjusting their inter-obstacle times to take expected running-time differences into account.
Envoi Allen’s race was a relatively well-run affair, even if a limit can be taken as to how well run by the proximity at the line and at various stages of the race of the 200-1 runner-up Echoes Of Family, who was second off a Irish mark of 89 on her previous outing and was ridden here by a 5lb conditional unable to claim. However, Frodon’s was more steadily run. Under a controlling front-running ride from Bryony Frost, Frodon covered the distance from the end of the rail shortly after the start of Envoi Allen’s race to the fence past the winning post in a time around six seconds slower than Envoi Allen, after which he picked up the pace such that the fractions between sets of fences of the respective winners were broadly similar. In view of Frodon’s propensity to go well fresh and the tendency of Minella Indo, the stronger stayer of the two anyway, not to hit peak form until Cheltenham, this result makes sense right now but might not hold much relevance four months down the line.
There was no letting up in informative action on what was a whirlwind weekend. The Grade 2 WKD Hurdle at Down Royal was chosen for the reappearance of last year’s beaten Triumph Hurdle favourite Zanahiyr but, though he won satisfactorily enough without impressing on either overall time or sectionals, a more impressive winner on the day was the mare Impervious in the preceding Grade 3 novice over the same distance. She ran the distance from the first hurdle to four out seven seconds faster than Zanahiyr yet came home barely a second slower in a timefigure of 131, suggesting she is an early contender for the Mares' Hurdle given her strength at the finish.
Lifetime Ambition got the better of the Albert Bartlett fourth Beacon Edge and Albert Bartlett winner Vanillier in a solidly-run beginners chase (timefigure 141) that already looks one of the best pieces of novice chase form around, right up there with the Grade 3 contest Cape Gentleman won at Cork on Sunday. Cape Gentleman was allowed to dictate at Cork in fractions that weren’t much faster for the most part than the following Cork Grand National later on a wet afternoon, but he really turned up the heat from the fourth-last to come home strongly in a 142 timefigure. His stable-companion Noble Yeats, who we flagged up here a few weeks ago after his Galway debut, wasn’t seen to anything like the same effect here under a very patient and arguably still educational ride - he was taken very wide on the track and allowed a good sight of his fences. He still needs to brush up his jumping, but he’ll leave this form well behind in time when granted a stiffer test of stamina.
On the domestic front, the Colin Parker Memorial at Carlisle on Sunday went to Fiddlerontheroof who was ridden to pick up the pieces behind Monkfish in the Brown Advisory Novices’ Chase at Cheltenham before disappointing at Aintree. His performance over an arguably insufficient trip unsurprisingly saw him cut for the Ladbrokes Trophy, but his timefigure was a relatively ordinary 132 and, on the clock at least, one-time big money purchase out of Irish points Papa Tango Charly, who won the opening novice handicap chase over the same trip, deserves a bigger shout. Always travelling well in race that was run at a much stronger pace than Fiddlerontheroof’s from the off, and at a pace which he maintained once taking over from long-time leader Karl Philippe, Papa Tango Charly passed the post with a ton in hand and already looks a completely different proposition over fences than hurdles. I’d be surprised if this isn’t very strong form.
