Originally posted by Irish Stamp@Nov 25 2007, 08:32 AM
They've merged the hurdles and chase course together Gareth to give more space on the flat course. The old water jump could be seen as they lined up at the start, sad to see that go as it was the only natural water jump in Britain. Not too keen on the portable fences either now given one of the main reasons for using them was that they were easy to repair (within minutes) yet for one of the 'chases they had to bypass 2 out as it was damaged.
Martin
That being the case then, the two courses still appear to have been riding significantly differently. At mile aggregates the hurdles course was;
-15.05
-17.75
-10.53
-13.45
but the chase course was ;
-5.23
-7.86
To some extent you can look at the corresponding 2006 fixture as 5 races run over the same distances, at the same venue, same time of year, and appear on both cards. The 0-140 chase was a 0-130 in 2006, otherwise they correlate.
The times to standard suggest the 2007 was broadly twice as slow, once you omit seek out a median figure. Indeed you can pretty well conclude this just by looking at the standards. (mile aggregates in brackets)
2006.......................................2007
-16.30 {-8.15}.........................-30.10 {-15.05}
-9.90 {-3.30}...........................-15.70 {-5.23} - Betfair Chase
-15.30 {-5.20}.........................-31.00 {-10.55}
-16.10 {-8.05}.........................-35.50 {-17.75}
-9.70 {-4.85}...........................-26.90 {-13.45}
The final race in the 2007 sample is the only one that's hinting at not necessarily being run at a true pace, otherwise there's a pretty well established ratio of 2:1. If we omit the slowest in each sample at a set aggregate (8F) we get -5.35 for last year and -11.07 this year. That's something like a ratio of 2.1 to 1, meaning that a tenuous projection would have Kauto Star running 6.93 at a mile, and 20.79 at 3 miles. That he's completed the course in a time that was -15.70 slow would suggest his performance is about 5 seconds faster than last years much heralded effort.
It's not the most reliable of methods admittedly, but it removes the need to use a class par as the race conditions are the same, and any discrepancies should be down to the ground conditions. shrug::
