There's another way of doing it too
Comparing only the races that appeared on both cards, under the same conditions, at the same time of year; (leaving the hunters chase alone)
......................
2008...........
std..............
2009..........
std..........diff
County Hurdle...
4.09.40.......12.40slw.......
4.05.20.......8.20slw.....4.20
Spa Hurdle.......
6.00.20.......22.20slw........
5.59.90......14.90slw....0.30
Triumph Hurdle..
4.07.83.......10.83slw.......
4.03.90.......6.90slw.....3.93
Gold Cup..........
6.47.84.......8.84slw.........
6.44.95......5.95slw......2.89
Grand Annual....
4.10.65.......11.65slw........
4.07.50......8.50slw......3.15
Now the seriously tragic will have noticed that the RP appear to have altered the standard time for the Spa Hurdle. In 2008 a time of 6.00.20 was slow by 22.20 and hence standard was 5.38.00. This year it appears to have been 5.59.90 and yet slow by 14.90 suggesting that they've put standard at 5.45.00 now (this isn't the only distance they've mucked about with, and they've also back dated some through their archive). Perhaps they've finally worked out that staying hurdlers are donkeys, but 7 secs :blink:. What it means is that I'm increasingly struggling to use standards now to compare horses, and it's making life none to easy if they keep shifting the goalposts. So I've assessed the Spa hurdle on it's old standard and called it 21.90 slw.
You can see straight away that there's a discrepancy between the 2008 and 2009 renewals of the Spa hurdle, suggesting that Weapons Amnesty has run quite a lot slower than expectation given that 2009 times were quite a bit quicker, and at this stage is well down on Nenuphar Collonges performance.
......................
2008...........
mile..........
2009..........
mile...........diff
County Hurdle...12.40slw.......
5.83slw.......8.20slw.....
3.85slw....1.98
Spa Hurdle........22.20slw.......
7.40slw......21.90slw......
7.30slw....0.10
Triumph Hurdle..10.83slw.......
5.09slw.......6.90slw.......
3.24slw....1.85
Gold Cup..........8.84slw.........
2.66slw......5.95slw........
1.79slw....0.87
Grand Annual....11.65slw........
5.64slw......8.50slw........
4.12slw...1.52
At the risk of labouring a point the first thing to note is how much slower the staying hurdlers are at a mile than any other horse. It's a pretty typical pattern in truth, even though you might point out that I'm not comparing like with like, but that is why we use class pars for the full analysis, and the same thing tends to happen (although this years World hurdle was an exception). Mind you, it was won by a converted chaser, and a chaser in waiting
. I'm guessing that the RP have caught up with this and decided to start altering the standards for staying hurdlers to make them look faster?
If you try doing the same thing with the equivilant grades of horse over different distances the same pattern emerges. For instance, this year despite facing slower ground, Go Native ran the 2 mile novice grade 1 equivilant slow by 4.50 at a mile. Over 21F's, annd again on slower ground and in a steady race, Mikael D'Haguenet ran the mile at 6.51 slw, both of which compare favourably with Weapons Amnesty's 7.30 on the old standard and on faster ground. That is to say, those hurdlers running over the shorter distances record faster mile aggregates against the course standard time. Now you might expect this to happen with the increase in distances etc, but the problem is, it doesn't happen with chasers. Horses jumping over fences can run just as fast mile aggregates at 3 miles as those running at 2 miles. Indeed you can even see this on this very limited sample where the Gold Cup horses have run faster per furlong than some who might have been conceivably well handicapped in the Grand Annual which is probably the country's premier 2 mile handicap chase now that the Chandlers a conditions event. Now I've been banging on about this for a few years, and it might very well be that the answer is to do with the standards being wrong and being set too high for staying hurdlers. It seems to be a wild inconsistancy however that the RP can set staying chase standards, but can't do the same for hurdlers for some reason (especially as they seem able to set 2 mile standards over the smaller obstacles). Even you want to try it, just drag out a few cards where a grade 1 staying hurdle is run alongside a 0-135 handicap chase. The grade 1 hurdlers should be about 30-40Ibs better, yet the chasers will frequently run the faster mile aggregates
Anyway I digress; normally you would use class pars to equalise the difference in calibre of horse contesting these events, but since the objective is to establish what the ground was like between 2008 and 2009 this wouldn't be necessary as the same types of horses are contesting the same races at the same distances, at the same time of year, the only difference in the times therefore, is likely to be attributable to the conditions of the ground/ weather; all things being equal. Now I'd discount the Spa hurdle as that appears to have been run at pretty well the same pace as the year previous. You need to decide why, but the evidence there points to Weapons Amnesty being slow, rather than Nenuphar Collonges being fast, as the ratios or percentages if you like between the race times in their respective years are consistant apart from the Spa hurdle of 2009.
Since its the gold Cup under investigation you might choose to ignore this too, and use the three remaining race differentials between 2008 and 2009 to set the variance.
1.98 + 1.85 + 1.52 = 5.35 / 3 = 1.78
1.78 secs slower per mile
1.78 / 8 = 0.22 x 26.5F = 5.91 secs
At race distance the ground was faster in 2009 by 5.91 secs. Kauto was faster by 2.89 secs, which means Denman was faster the year previous by 3.02 secs (or about 12L's on BHA reckoning). If you include the Gold Cups in the respective calculations of variance then Kauto will be nearer as the new mean is 1.55 secs per mile
1.55/ 8 = 0.19 x 26.5 = 5.14 secs - 2.89 secs = 2.25 faster (9L's)
