Cheltenham 2017/18

Saturday night metcheck forecast 12mm of rain, I don't think you'll get 1mm (although you'll get 6mm before midday).
 
I'm fairly sure that we had snow before the 2007 Festival. The Champion Hurdle (Sublimity) was run on soft and the Gold Cup (Kauto Star) on good to soft. The end of the week is still too far away to be remotely confident about levels of precipitation. As in Eric Morecambe's piano playing, they can predict the weather perfectly but not necessarily the correct place or time.
 
According to the weather station at Cleeve hill, the nearest to the course, they had 6mm of rain yesterday and are promised a further 1mm tonight between 8pm - 11pm.

Also unusual that Claisse did not publish his going stick records in yesterday’s update so we could compare it with previous readings.


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There's going to be lots of fingernails left stuck in the cliff, when Samcro isn't decd for the Supreme! :lol:
 
If he’s declared great. I hold what I had set aside for the weeks handicaps on a 14/1 docket for the Supreme.

If he’s not no problem. I revert back to my 8/1 antepost bet for the Ballymore and the money refunded to my account is there for the handicaps. Fingernails remain very much in tact.

Of course I hope he runs in the supreme. Financially it’d be a mid 4 figure sum in the bank because lets face it, he wins it. I’d be more concerned in the Ballymore with OTBS & ND than Getabird and Klashnikov in the Supreme.

But the joy to the bet was there’s no risk involved. There was nothing to lose. The bet was placed on the basis there could be soft ground. At the moment it’s soft with more rain promised.

His owner has come out a few weeks back and said it was definitely the Ballymore, 100%. A few days later & in most stable tours Elliott stayed unless it got soft-heavy the Ballymore was the plan. Today Eddie O’Leary said they weren’t even thinking about the Supreme......unless it got heavy so I suppose they are somewhat thinking about it and have slightly changed their tune.

I wouldn’t dream of cashing out on the bet with the forecast that’s promised either.


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Kauto Abu said:
If he’s declared great. I hold what I had set aside for the weeks handicaps on a 14/1 docket for the Supreme.

If he’s not no problem. I revert back to my 8/1 antepost bet for the Ballymore and the money refunded to my account is there for the handicaps.

Of course I hope he runs in the supreme. Financially it’d be a mid 4 figure sum in the bank because lets face it, he wins it. I’d be more concerned in the Ballymore with OTBS & ND than Getabird and Klashnikov in the Supreme.

But the joy to the bet was there’s no risk involved. There was nothing to lose.


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Absolutely agree my thoughts exactly apart from your worrying about the wrong one's in the Ballymore :ninja:
 
Kim Bailey on his blog this morning:

'[FONT=crimson_roman]Plus 2 and dry when driving in. Foggy above..[/FONT][FONT=crimson_roman]Yes I drove in this morning with ease.. Snow gone off the roads and the colour green was back in the description of my surroundings.. Relief.[/FONT]
[FONT=crimson_roman]Relief too for Simon Claisse (Clerk of the course at Cheltenham) who was over for supper last night.[/FONT]
[FONT=crimson_roman]Simon and his team had just dug the last fence clear of snow. Every fence on the course, including the cross country fences, had their snow covering removed by shovel and barrow. That stops false ground around the fences from melting snow, and you might well ask why no tractor help.. tractor tryes marks on the grass.[/FONT]
[FONT=crimson_roman]Simon was happy that the course had taken the weather well and was even amazed to see some grass growth..[/FONT]
[FONT=crimson_roman]The ground is currently described as soft and good to soft in places and with not a huge amount of rain forecasted the likelihood is that the ground on the first day will be good to soft and after 4 days, good… So be warned don’t go mad backing heavy ground horses.'[/FONT]
 
Kim must have had one too many sherries with his supper and was dreaming of Charbel getting his desired good ground. 🤣

Every forecast going gives very heavy rain for the weekend and loads of showers leading up to it so it’s looking like wishful thinking on his behalf. Claisse himself, only yesterday, acknowledged the rain forecast stating that the word ‘heavy’ may well appear in the going in the lead up to the festival because of it. This was his quote to RUK;

He told Racing UK: "It looks as if with this milder weather it's going to stay unsettled, with bits and pieces of rain which will probably keep the ground where it is.

"Friday-Saturday looks like it could be pretty wet, with 10 or 12 millimetres - half an inch of rain.



"We may have heavy in places before we start, but let's remember that there have been plenty of years when we've been soft the weekend before the Festival and have ended up good by the Friday."

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Kauto Abu said:
Kim must have had one too many sherries with his supper and was dreaming of Charbel getting his desired good ground. ��

Every forecast going gives very heavy rain for the weekend and loads of showers leading up to it so it’s looking like wishful thinking on his behalf. Claisse himself, only yesterday, acknowledged the rain forecast stating that the word ‘heavy’ may well appear in the going in the lead up to the festival because of it. This was his quote to RUK;

He told Racing UK: "It looks as if with this milder weather it's going to stay unsettled, with bits and pieces of rain which will probably keep the ground where it is.

"Friday-Saturday looks like it could be pretty wet, with 10 or 12 millimetres - half an inch of rain.



"We may have heavy in places before we start, but let's remember that there have been plenty of years when we've been soft the weekend before the Festival and have ended up good by the Friday."

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The weather models change so much even 3+ days out. What is clear is that there is rain around, but the intensity, duration and when that rain will fall still appears to be uncertain. The netweather models have 20mm falling on Thurs but with 85% precipitation risk, zero Fri, and then 10-12mm every day from Sat-Weds but % risk being 75% or less.

This weekend certainly appears to be the deciding days. With 48hr decs that's Sunday lunchtime-afternoon so it could be that the rain expected hasn't fallen before Tuesday's decs adding further uncertainty with only one declaration permitted. That would most effect the Supreme and Arkle so Samcro and Footpad. Is there an angle for others on this cut off & weather running into that deadline?
 
Data collected from the Cleeve Hill Weather site

March 2018 - rainfall to date = 0.38 inches

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February 2018 - total rainfall = 0.94 inches

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March 2017 - total rainfall = 2.13 inches of which approx 1.15 inches pre-festival

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February 2017 - total rainfall = 1.82 inches

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2017 Feb-Festival = 2.97 inches
2018 Feb-to date = 1.32 inches
 
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The only difference between this and last year was last winter was very dry and of course the 200 tonnes of snow on the course causing it to go soft a week out. The water table is currently very high. Only a small thing tho. [emoji14]


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It's certainly a more interesting weather discussion than we usually have this time each year..........but I still maintain this racecourse has the ability to surprise everyone.

If I was needing soft ground horses next week, I would certainly have wanted it called a little deeper than Soft, G/S in Places, after all that the snow had been shifted - no matter how much rain is forecast before tomorrow week.
 
Claisse is probably going to declare good/soft somewhere in his description anyway. Last year it rode a lot slower than G/S on day one because I remember going in again on Buveur D’Air after they interviewed Jack Kennedy when he won the Supreme. He said it rode like soft ground.

I just read back through last years going thread for the festival. In the weekend up to the festival Claisse changed the going stick readings from one day to to the next without any rain. It went from 6.7 back to 6.3, this was around the time a few trainers were due to walk the course.

That’s why I’d like to see what his official readings were! It rode slower on day 1 than the official going report last year. There wasn’t the rain forecast in the lead up to last year either. I think they just had bits & bobs & 1mm the Sunday before. There’s a lot more around this year in the week leading in.


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Kauto Abu said:
Claisse is probably going to declare good/soft somewhere in his description anyway. Last year it rode a lot slower than G/S on day one because I remember going in again on Buveur D’Air after they interviewed Jack Kennedy when he won the Supreme. He said it rode like soft ground.

I just read back through last years going thread for the festival. In the weekend up to the festival Claisse changed the going stick readings from one day to to the next without any rain. It went from 6.7 back to 6.3, this was around the time a few trainers were due to walk the course.

That’s why I’d like to see what his official readings were! It rode slower on day 1 than the official going report last year. There wasn’t the rain forecast in the lead up to last year either. I think they just had bits & bobs & 1mm the Sunday before. There’s a lot more around this year in the week leading in.
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My going allowance for Day 1 last year was 0.04spf (Hd) and 0.31spf (Ch). There's no way that's anything worse than soft side of good. The allowances for the rest of the meeting suggesting it wasn't as good but maybe those Tuesday times were due to racing on fresh ground. The RP 'corrections' were minus figures, pointing to good at worst.
 
Desert Orchid said:
My going allowance for Day 1 last year was 0.04spf (Hd) and 0.31spf (Ch). There's no way that's anything worse than soft side of good. The allowances for the rest of the meeting suggesting it wasn't as good but maybe those Tuesday times were due to racing on fresh ground. The RP 'corrections' were minus figures, pointing to good at worst.
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The going stick reading for the Tuesday was identical to a January one. Only difference was the wording. The January one read soft, g/s in places. The festival one read Good/soft. A Claisse special.





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I'm not convinced going stick readings are particularly accurate, and I'm always wary of an agenda when worded descriptions are released.

The proof of the pudding [that is Claisse] is in the results.

There's no way overall conditions on the Tuesday last season indicated slow times. As I said, I can only imagine the fresh ground must have helped a lot. I have much slower going allowances through the rest of the week, slightly less slow on the Friday than on the Thursday.
 
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